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M.L.mLBROOK.M.D, 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



CURE OP NERVOUSNESS. 



Amid all our speculative uncertainty there is one 
practical point as clear as the day, namely : that the 
brightness and the usefulness of life, as well as its 
darkness and disaster, depend to a great extent upon 
our own use or abuse of that miraculous organ, the 
brain. — Professor Tyndall. 



HYGIENE 



OF THE 



BRAIN AND NERVES 



AND THE 



CURE OF NERVOUSNESS. 



With Twenty-Eight Original Letters from 

Leading Thinkers and Writers 

concerning their 



PHYSICAL AND INTELLECTUAL HABITS. 

BY 

M. L. HOLBROOK, M.D., 

EDITOR OP THE " HERALD OF HEALTH"; AUTHOR OP " PARTT7RITIOH 

WITHOUT PAIN," "EATING FOR STRENGTH, "LIVER COMPLAINT," 

"DYSPEPSIA AND headache"; TRANSLATOR OF "FRUIT 

AND BREAD! A NATURAL AND SCIENTIFIC DIET," 

AND OF "FROM THE CRADLE TO THE SCHOOL." 






NEW YORK : 

M.. L. HOLBROOK & COMPANY 

1878. 




h5\ 
TTFS 



vn 



Copyrighted 

By M. L. HoJbrook, M. D., 

1878. 



C. P. Somerby, 

Electrotyper and Printer, 

139 Eishth-st., N. Y. 



CONTENTS, 

PART I. 

CHAPTER. PAGE. 

I. The Brain 7 

II. The Spinal Cord 17 

III. The Cranial and Spinal Nerves 22 

IV. The Sympathetic Nervous System 29 

Y. How the Nerves Act 34 

VI. Has Nervous Activity Any Limit ? 41 

VII. Nervous Exhaustion -. 46 

VIII. How to Cure Nervousness 53 

IX. The Cure of Nervousness — Continued 64 

X. Value of a Large Supply of Food in 

Nervous Disorders 74 

XI. Important Questions Answered 88 

XII. What our Thinkers and Scientists Say ; 118 

COMPOSED OF QUOTATIONS ON THE FOL- 
LOWING SUBJECTS : 

Expectant Attention — Wm. B. Carpenter, M.D., 

FR.S 118 

Normally Developed Brains— EH. Clarke, M.B. 120 
Alcohol Enfeebles the Reason — Benjamin W. 

Richardson, M.B., F.M.S 120 

Women and Brain Labor — Frances Power Coooe. 121 
Difference between Man's and Woman's Brain 

—G. Spurzheim, M.B 123 

Rejuvenating Power of Sleep — J. B. Black, }f.B. 125 
Physiological Effects of Excessive Brain Labor 

— Wm. A. Hammond, M.B 126 

Training Both Sides of the Brain — Br. Seguin. . 127 
Amount of Blood Necessary to Mental Vigor — 

Alexander Bain, LL.B 129 

Take Care of Your Health — John Tyndall, 

LL.B., F.B.8.. 130 

Neuter Verbs — ArcliMshop Whately 131 

Exercising the Brain — Lionel John Beale, 31. B. 

C.8 132 



iv Contents. 



page". 



' How Chancellor Kent was Educated — Chancels 

lor Kent 134* 

Origin of Abuse of the Mind — RobH Macintosh.. 135 

Intellect Not All— Dr. Brown-Sequard ; 137 

Early Mental Culture a Mistake — Amariah* 

Brigham, M.D I . , 138 

Walter Scott's Boyhood — Harriet Martineau 140 

A Wise Thought from Herbert Spencer 141 

Hot-House Brains — R. R. Bowker 144 

Book - Gluttony and Lesson - Bibbing — T. W. 

Huxley, M.D., F.R.S 145 

Continued and Varied Activity of the Mind — 

Benj. W. Richardson, M.B., F.R.S. .... 147 

PART II. 

Physical and Intellectual Habits of Distinguished 
Men and Women, as Described by Them- 
selves for this Work. 

LETTERS. PAGE, 

I. O. B. Frothingham 151 

II. Francis W. Newman 159 

III. T. L. Nichols, M.D 166 

IV. Joseph Rodes Buchanan, M.D 171 

V. Gerrit Smith (Written by his daughter). . 179 

VI. Thomas Wentworth Higginson 182 

VII. Norton S. Townshend, M.D 184 

VIII. Edward Baltzer 190 

IX. Wm. Lloyd Garrison 194 

X. A. Bronson Alcott 195 

XL S. O. Gleason, M.D 198 

XII. William E. Dodge 201 

XIII. Henry Hyde Lee. . . , 203 

XIV. Dio Lewis, M.D 205 

XV. Frederic Beecher Perkins 207 

XVI. Judge Samuel A. Foot, LL.D 211 

XVII. Mark Hopkins 213 

XVIII. William Cullen Bryant 214 

XIX. William Howitt Y 219 

XX. The late Rev. John Todd 236 

XXI. The late Rev. Charles Cleveland , . . 244 

XXII. W. A., M.D 247 

XX11L Sarah J. Hale 250 

XXIV. Horace and Mary Mann 251 

XXV. Julia E. Smith 254 

XXVI. Mary J. Studley, M.D 259 

XXVII. Elizabeth Oakes Smith 264 

XXVIII. Rebecca B. Gleason, M.D 270 



PREFACE. 

During a month's sojourn, many years ago, 
in near proximity to a settlement of Indians, 
where I had frequent opportunity to observe 
their habits and mental characteristics, I came 
to the conclusion that, whatever their defects 
of development might be, they were certainly 
not subject to nervousness. There are abund- 
ant examples among our own race of people 
who were " born before nerves were invented." 
But, on the other hand, the greater strain put 
on the nervous system by our unnatural meth- 
ods of culture, and by the sharp conflict which 
competition compels, has caused a remarkable 
increase in nervous maladies. A true civiliza- 
tion would seek to prevent them, and that can 
only be done by a correct knowledge of the 
functions and uses of the nervous system. 



vi Preface. 

We ought certainly to understand the use 
of all the tools which we are obliged to em- 
ploy. The brain is, in one sense, a tool, 
employed in the manufacture of thought and 
emotion. Wisdom would dictate that we should 
learn how to keep it in the very best condition 
possible. It has been the aim in preparing 
this book to give such knowledge as is neces- 
sary to do this. It has been gathered from 
many sources, and put into a form most easily 
understood. It is to be hoped that it may be 
serviceable to all who read it. 

The numerous letters from some of our 
thinkers and writers, giving an account of their 
own physical and intellectual habits, found in 
Part II, we are sure will be appreciated; and 
we hereby tender to the writers of the same 
our hearty thanks for permitting us to give 
them to the public. 

M. L. H. 



HYGIENE OF THE BRAIN 
AND NERVES. 

PART I. 

CHAPTER I. 

The Brain. 

There are few persons who do not appre- 
ciate the value of sound lungs, a strong heart, a 
vigorous stomach, muscles that never tire of mo- 
tion-, and nearly everybody gives some practical 
attention to the health of these organs; but the 
nervous system, which presides over all the vital 
processes of the body, and out of which flow 
thought, feeling, emotion and will, which make 
us intelligent creatures, receives too little of our 
care — is too little guarded from evil influences. 

It is to make some slight contribution to the 



8 The Brain. 

well-being of the brain and nerves that this little 
book is undertaken. It is true there are those 
who think that the less we know of ourselves, 
and the sooner we forget to live by rule, the bet- 
ter ; but this class will soon become obsolete and 
forgotten. The tendency of modern times is to 
make the discoveries of science available for hu- 
man welfare, and what welfare is more important 
than the perfection of our own bodies, and espe- 
cially of that part of them most nearly allied to 
the immortal — the nervous system. The poet. 
George Herbert, a companion and friend of Lord 

Bacon, and perhaps the best of the old devotional 
poets, in that most exquisite and thoughtful poem, 
" The Church Porch," says : 

" Slight those who say, amidst their sickly healths, 
Thou liv'st by rule; what doth not so but man? 
Houses are built by rule, and commonwealths; 

Entice the trusty sun, if that you can, 
From his ecliptic line, beckon the sky — 
Who lives by rule then keeps good company. 

11 Who keeps no guard upon himself is slack, 
And rots to nothing at the next great thaw! 
Man is a shop of rules, a well-trussed pack, 

Whose every parcel underwrites a law; 
Love not thyself, nor give thy humors way: 
God gave them to thee under lock and key." 



The Brain. 9 

In order to guard the brain and nerves from 
injury, and give them that wise care which is 
essential to right living, we should possess some 
understanding of the nature, structure and uses 
of these organs ; and so we will begin by giving 
a general view of them. 

The brain is that large mass of soft, pulpy 
matter which fills the skull. Every animal whicli 
has a backbone or spinal column has a brain, 
with just one exception, and that is an oceanic 
fish ; but the brains of different animals vary 
greatly in size. The elephant has the largest 
brain of any animal — one that sometimes weighs 
nine or ten pounds. The full-sized whale has a 
brain weighing about five pounds ; but an ele- 
phant's brain only weighs the five hundredth part 
of the weight of its body, while a man's brain 
weighs not far from the one thirty-sixth part of 
his own weight. The brains of birds are larger 
in proportion to the size of the body than those 
of men. A canary's is the twentieth of its own 
weight, and the little blue -headed tit's the 
twelfth. 

The brain of man, however, is of better quality 
than that of any animal, and weighs on the aver- 



10 The Brain. 

age forty-eight ounces ; that of woman weighs 
forty-four ounces. It is separated into three 




Fig. 1. — Vertical Section of the Brain. 
1. Medulla Oblongata. 
4. Cerebellum. 
29-34. Cerebrum and its Convolutions. 

principal parts: the cerebrum, the cerebellum, 
and the medulla oblongata. 

THE CEREBRUM. 

The cerebrum occupies nearly the entire 
skull, in fact all except the small portion at the 
back part of the base of this cavity. Its function 
is that of thought, feeling, emotion, will, intelli- 
gence. It is now certain that there can be no 



Cerebrum — Cerebellum. 11 

intelligence without brain substance. The oyster 
and clam are not intelligent — they have no brain ; 
and in proportion as man's brain is increased in 
size and developed we have intellectual phenom- 
ena. On the other hand, let the brain substance 
be injured or destroyed, or deficient in quantity 
or quality, and idiocy, stupidity, ignorance, fee- 
bleness, absence of intelligence, lack of will and 
moral force, become at once apparent. Con- 
sciousness is inseparable from the activity of this 
part of the brain, and though there are many 
movements in animals after the cerebrum is re- 
moved, yet no consciousness is present. 

THE CEREBELLUM. 

The cerebellum has entirely different work 
to do from that of the brain proper, and is much 
smaller in size, weighing only a few ounces, while 
the cerebrum weighs several pounds. It is sepa- 
rated from the cerebrum by a tough membrane 
called the tentorium, a process of the dura mater, 
or lining membrane of the skull. This process 
which separates the large and small brain is very 
serviceable, as it forms a bed for the former, and 
relieves the latter from supporting it. 

There has been much written about the func- 



12 The Brain. 

tions of the cerebellum, and it is now known that 
its chief function is the co-ordinating into one 
movement the entire action of the muscles. This 
is perhaps best illustrated by a comparison. A 
skillful dancer or gymnast can combine the ac- 
tions of his muscles into one beautiful movement 
of grace and dexterity. The nimble kitten will 
play, and its movements be wonderfully har- 
monious. It knows precisely how far to jump 
for a mouse, and in making the effort all the 
muscles obey. The monkey and squirrel climb 
trees with perfect ease, and rarely fall. Their 
actions illustrate that co-ordination which physi- 
ologists say is the function of the cerebellum. 
On the other hand, the drunken man cannot co- 
ordinate the movements of his muscles, and so he 
staggers about. The muscles refuse to obey be- 
cause the cerebellum has been temporarily para- 
lyzed, and cannot attend to its functions. 

The method by which physiologists prove 
this function, it is true, has some objections, for 
it consists in removing the cerebellum from such 
animals as can endure it, more especially from 
the pigeon and common barnyard cock. The 
result is, they immediately lose this co-ordinating 



The Cerebellum. 13 

power and cannot control their muscles, lack sta- 
bility, and act as a drunkard does. 

These experiments cannot be tried on human 
beings, but there are a few cases in which the 
cerebellum has become diseased which show that 
co-ordinating power is its chief function. In 
those fishes which possess great power of move- 
ment the cerebellum is relatively larger than in 
those of a torpid nature ; and in reptiles we have 
a very good illustration of the relation between a 
small cerebellum and that inertness which they 
manifest. In snakes the cerebellum is small, 
and though they may at times show considerable 
muscular force, yet as a rule they are lazy, and 
prefer to move about no more than is necessary. 
If poisonous reptiles had a larger cerebellum, 
they would be much more dangerous creatures 
than they are at present. 

In birds the cerebellum is of large size, in 
perfect conformity with the varied muscular 
movements which this class of animals perform. 
In the mammalia the cerebellum varies greatly 
in development, yet there is a close correspond- 
ence between its size and the amount and variety 
of muscular movements which the animal can per- 
form. Men with large muscles and great physical 



14 The Brain. 

power have a large cerebellum, while feeble ones, 
and those by nature of a delicate constitution, 
generally possess one of a diminutive size. The 
same is true of animals. It is said that in the 
horse or ox trained to hard work the cerebellum 
is larger than in the one not so trained. 

Dr. Ferrier, whose remarkable studies and 
experiments on the brain by means of electricity 
have attracted so much attention in the scientific 
world within a few years, has demonstrated that 
the cerebellum is the ganglionic center of the 
motor nerves of the eye — every kind of move- 
ment of the eyeballs being proved by him to 
originate from a particular part of this organ. 
This helps to explain the very close relation be- 
tween the guiding power we derive from the eye 
and the equilibrium of our muscular movements. 
With what difficulty we maintain our equilibrium 
when we cannot see ! So, too, the dizziness which 
comes from turning round rapidly, Dr. Carpenter 
thinks, is the result of a compression of ocular 
impressions which prevent the movements of the 
eye co-ordinating with the general movements of 
the body. 

There may be other functions of the cere- 



The Medulla Oblongata. 15 

bellum not yet discovered, but as yet no other 
are known to exist with any certainty. 

THE MEDULLA OBLONGATA. 

The medulla connects the brain proper with 
the spinal cord. It is a center of less complex 
functions than the brain, but more complex than 
the cord, and intimately connected with essen- 
tial vital functions. All but four of the cranial 
nerves are directly connected with its gray cen- 
ters, and it is the seat of such actions as pro- 
ceed from these nerves, either singly or com- 
bined. The co-ordination of the muscles which 
produce articulate speech probably have their 
center here. It is also a center of facial expres- 
sion, and without doubt the crying of babies is a 
reflex action of this part. The chief function of 
the medulla, however, is the co-ordination of re- 
spiratory movements. So long as the medulla 
is intact, the function of respiration goes on with 
regularity and rhythm, although other parts of 
the brain may have been destroyed. Destroy 
this, however, and respiration ceases and instant 
death ensues. Nearly all know that a blow on 
the base of the brain destroys life instantly. 
This is because the medulla has been destroyed 



16 The Brain. 

and the function of respiration lost. On account 
of this it has been called " the seat of life," " the 
vital point," etc. The only animal, so far as we 
know, that can live after the medulla has been 
injured is the frog, and this is explained by the 
fact that it respires partly through the skin. 

The medulla is also a source of innervation 
for the heart, though this organ has centers in its 
own substance which help to govern its regular 
movements. 



CHAPTER II. 

The Spinal Cord. 

The spinal cord is an extension of the brain 
outside of the skull into the passage that consti- 
tutes a part of that long chain of bones piled one 
upon the other, and called the spinal column or 
backbone. It is an easy matter to get a view ot 
this cord in any animal after the butcher has 
split the bones with his ax, exposing more or 
less of it in, it is true, a somewhat fragmentary 
state to our view ; or it may be dissected out 
carefully in fishes, birds, or other small creatures, 
and studied with care. It is a soft, delicate, 
pulpy mass of gray and white substance, pro- 
tected from injury by the bony prominences 
which arch around it in a very wonderful way, 
inclosing it on all sides in a long cavity, or canal, 
which is often called the spinal canal, and cerebro- 



18 The Spinal Cord. 

spinal axis. The cord is surrounded by an en- 
velope of membranes which support it and the 
vessels supplying it with blood. The length of 
the cord is from eighteen to twenty inches, but its 
weight is very slight, hardly exceeding an ounce 
and a half. In form it is round, being slightly 
flattened in certain parts. It extends downward 
to the first lumbar vertebra. Like the brain, it is 
divided into two lateral halves. It would be 
tedious to discuss at great length the anatomy of 
the cord, which is exceedingly curious, and diffi- 
cult to be understood without special study in 
the dissecting-room, which is unnecessary to our 
object. We will, however, say briefly something 
about its functions. The anterior lateral half is 
entirely insensible to irritation, and serves as a 
conductor of stimulus from the brain to the 
muscles. Cut this half of the cord, and those 
parts situated below it lose their power of motion. 
If the posterior or back part is cut, however, the 
power of motion is not lost. When the will 
directs that certain muscles shall act, it sends the 
order down through this half of the cord, which, 
if not injured, carries it to the muscles, and they 
obey. If, however, there be any injury to this 
half, the connection is severed, and the man- 



The Spinal Cord. 19 

dates of the will are not and can not be carried 
out. 

The posterior half of the spinal cord has dif- 
ferent functions, perhaps several, although as yet 
our knowledge is not complete on this subject. 
It is now certain that if the gray substance of 
the posterior half of the spinal cord be cut in 
two, then sensibility of all the parts below this 
region is completely destroyed, so that they 
may be cut, pinched and pricked without any 
sensation. There is no means of communica- 
ting intelligence of any pain from the surface 
to the brain, and so a knowledge of pain cannot 
exist. 

The posterior half of the spinal cord may be 
cut without in the least destroying sensation. 
This half of the cord is concerned with the cere- 
bellum in aiding to co-ordinate the movements 
of the muscles. It is not necessary to go through 
with all the details of the experiments that lead 
us to this conclusion. We will mention that 
the peculiar disease formerly believed to be a 
form of paralysis, and frequently occurring in 
patients who have suffered with diphtheria, 
typhoid fever, and some other diseases, known 
as locomotor ataxia, in which there is difficulty 



20 The Spinal Cord. 

in co-ordinating muscular action, is the result of 
lesion of this half of the spinal cord. 

We have now three different functions of the 
spinal cord : 

1. The conduction of motary stimulus to the 
muscles. 

2. The conduction of sensation to the brain. 
3.' Co-ordinating power. 

But we are not through with the functions of 
the cord. "We know that it is, after all, only an 
extension of the brain — that it is, like it, com- 
posed of gray and white matter, and its gray 
substance may, to a slight extent, generate nerv- 
ous energy, and act as a nervous center of mo- 
tion, and perhaps of sensation. The experiments 
which have led to this view have been made 
mainly on frogs which have been decapitated, 
and which can be made under certain circum- 
stances to jump about, to apparently feel pain, 
at least to try to brush off with one foot a burn- 
ing acid applied on the other foot. Similar ex- 
periments bring similar results applied to decapi- 
tated criminals. 

If the spinal cord be injured, the parts below 
the injury are paralyzed. This happens when 
any serious accident has broken or displaced the 



The Spinal Cord. 21 

bones of the column which surround and pro- 
tect the cord. Even a little piece of bone 
pressing on it cuts off all communication with 
the brain and the parts below. When a person 
is paralyzed in this way we say his back is 
broken. If the injury be in the middle of the 
back the legs are paralyzed. If at the neck, the 
whole body is paralyzed. 

All along the spinal column nerves branch 
off that go to every portion of the body. 

The spinal cord should not be injured by 
blows, by jars, as in jumping from a height, by 
exposura to cold, by violent exercise, or by tight 
clothing which impedes the circulation of the 
blood in the parts, and the flow of nervous in- 
fluence to and from the brain to all parts of the 
body. 



CHAPTER III. 

The Cranial and Spinal Nerves. 

There are thirty-one pairs of spinal nerves. 
Each one of these arises from the spinal cord by 
two roots; one of these roots is endowed with 
motor properties — that is to say, it conveys that 
property to the muscles which gives them the 
power to contract and move — but the other root 
has a very different property, for it cannot induce 
motion, but only the power of feeling and sensa- 
tion. The root which gives sensation is the larger 
of the two. Why this is so is difficult to see un- 
less sensation requires more conducting surface 
than motion. Each of these roots has a ganglion 
of its own. A ganglion is simply an enlargement 
of the nerve into a small bulb like shape, and an 
immediate return to its former size. Just beyond 
the ganglion the two roots unite into one com- 



The Cranial and Spinal Nerves. 23 

mon nerve, passing out at the spinal canal by a 
passage-way through the vertebra. Any one may 
examine the passage for himself by taking one of 
the vertebral bones of an animal, and studying 
it. The two roots after they have united in one 
possess both motor and sensory power. As soon 
as a nerve has passed out of the bony cavity that 
held it in close confinement and gave it protection, 
it divides into two branches ; one branch is dis- 
tributed on the front of the body and the other 
on the back. The branch w T hich supplies the 
front of the body also supplies the limbs, and is 
much larger than the other one. These thirty- 
one pairs of nerves are called the spinal nerves. 
Eight pairs are given off from the cervical or 
neck portion of the spinal column, twelve from 
the dorsal, and five from the lumbar, five from the 
sacral and one from the coccygeal. The nerves 
of the cervical region supply the muscles and 
skin of the neck and arms. The dorsal supply 
the back, chest and abdomen, and the lumbar 
nerves supply the lumbar region, and they all 
have a union with another nervous system not 
yet mentioned — the sympathetic nerves — which 
will form the subject of a future chapter. 

Besides the spinal nerves there are nine other 



24 The Cranial and Spinal Nerves. 

pairs which arise directly from the brain itself. 
These are the cranial nerves and have special 
functions, which are very different from those of 
spinal nerves. They are as follows : 

The first is called the olfactory nerve. It 
spreads out in a certain part of the nasal cavity 
and furnishes the sense of smell. 

The second is called the optic nerve. It is of 
very large size, goes into the eye and expands 
into the nervous membrane of the eyeball, the 
retina, where it receives the vibrations of light, 
conducting them to the brain, where they are 
transformed into sensations of sight. 

The third is called the motor oculi communis, 
distributed to the muscles of the eyeballs. It is 
a small nerve and conducts to the muscles of the 
eyeball stimulus for moving the ball in many 
ways. 

The fourth, or trochlear, is a motor nerve, 
distributed to a muscle of the eye not supplied by 
the third pair. 

The fifth pair has two roots, a small one sup- 
plying the muscles which masticate our food, and 
a large one the trifacial, or nerve which gives 
general sensibility to the face. A most torment- 
ing form of neuralgia originates in this nerve. 



Further Remarks on Cranial Nerves. 25 

The sixth pair supplies another muscle of the 
eyeball not otherwise provided for. 

The seventh pair has two branches, one form- 
ing the nerve of hearing, and the other distribu- 
ted to the muscles of the face. 

The eighth pair consists of three branches : the 
glossopharyngeal, presiding over the sense of 
taste ; the pneumo gastric, with very extensive 
distribution, to be spoken of hereafter ; and the 
spinal accessory, also of extensive distribution. 

The ninth pair is the sublingual or motor 
nerve of the tongue. 

FURTHER REMARKS ON THE CRANIAL NERVES. 

The third pair of nerves, when healthy and 
evenly distributed to the eye, gives a wonderful 
beauty to this organ and its surroundings. If 
paralyzed or diseased, then the upper eyelid falls, 
the eyeball becomes immovable, except outwardly, 
and the pupil of the eye dilates. The third pair 
animates the eye and its surrounding muscles. 

The seventh pair of nerves is of special 
interest ; one branch going to the ear for the pur- 
pose of taking recognition of sound, and the other 
branch being distributed to the superficial muscles 
of the face, constituting really the nerve of expres- 



26 The Cranial and Spinal Nerves. 

sion. We may imagine this nerve when large and 
active giving wonderful beauty of expression 
to our faces; and, on the other hand, when inact- 
ive, giving a listless, stupid countenance, and 
when paralyzed giving a fearful distortion of the 
facial- muscles. 

One branch of the eighth pair, the spinal ac- 
cessory, seems to have an intimate connection 
with the voice, this becoming weak, hoarse, and 
perhaps partially lost on division of the nerve. 

It also influences swallowing ; for its division 
prevents the complete close of the glottis, and so 
food may find its way into the air-passages. A 
branch of this nerve, which passes to the heart, 
seems to hold over it an inhibitory power ; perhaps 
preventing it from too rapid movement. Another 
external branch of this nerve assists in the con- 
trol of the respiratory muscles during speak- 
ing and singing, so as to make the breathing 
correspond to the necessary action of the voice. 

Perhaps the most interesting of the cranial 
nerves is the pneumogastric branch of the eighth 
pair. Its name, pneumogastric, signifies to some 
extent its distribution, namely, to the stomach 
and lungs ; but it has branches distributed to the 
ear, the pharynx, larynx, heart, lungs, stomach, 



Further Remarks on Cranial Nerves. 27 

liver and abdomen. Its action upon the heart is 
to hold it to a certain number of pulsations per 
minute, and if the branch going to the heart is 
cut this organ begins to beat at a rapid rate. 
The effect on the lungs is quite the opposite, for 
by a section of the branch distributed to these or- 
gans, the respirations become deep, but infre- 
quent, falling to four in a minute. 

The influence of this nerve on the 6tomach is 
very great; and it seems to furnish it with a stim- 
ulus for both the secretion of its gastric juice and 
for its muscular contractions. When both nerves 
are divided, digestion ceases almost entirely, and 
death supervenes. There is little doubt that 
much of our modern dyspepsia arises from an 
insufficient supply of nervous stimuli for this 
organ through the pneumogastric nerve. The 
cause, however, does not lie in the nerve, which 
has no power to generate stimuli, but in the brain, 
which does not generate it in sufficient quantities, 
or, if it does, gives it to other organs. 

The termination of the nerves in any organ is 
curious and interesting. In muscles they ter- 
minate suddenly and at right angles in a muscular 
fiber. In glands they terminate abruptly in the 
cells. The influence of the nerves over secretion 



28 The Cranial and Spinal JYerves. 

is very great and well known. The sensory 
nerves do not terminate in any organ specially, 
but in the integument of the skin in filaments. 

Nerves are composed mainly of albuminous 
substances, combined with sulphur and phospho- 
rus, and with a brain fat, also combined with 
phosphorus; also of a substance resembling starch. 

Nervous tissue is regenerated after its partial 
destruction — that is, if a nerve be divided or re- 
moved it grows again slowly, and its function is 
restored ; and it is now known that where a por- 
tion of the brain is destroyed it may grow again. 
Especially is this true in the case of pigeons, and, 
no doubt, it is also true in the case of man. 

The properties of the nerves of sensation and 
motion are inherent, and the perfection of their 
activity depends largely upon a full supply of 
healthy blood for the nourishing of their sub- 
stance. 



CHAPTEE IV. 

The Sympathetic Nervous System. 

There are two nervous systems in each in- 
dividual. They are quite distinct from one an- 
other, and yet united by filaments, so that there 
is an action and reaction from one to the other. 
The first is the nervous system which we have 
described, with its center in the brain and spinal 
cord, and its ramifications in every part of the 
body. This system is the seat of thought, emo- 
tion, sensation, and will. The other is the sym- 
pathetic nervous system, and presides over the 
functions of nutrition, secretion and vegetative 
life. It has its center in what may be called 
the abdominal brain, or pair of brains, consisting 
of large semi-lunar ganglia, one lying on each 
side of the spinal column in the upper part of 
the abdominal cavity. A chain extends upward 



30 The Sympathetic Nervous System. 

on each side of the spinal column, the whole 
length of the trunk, into the brain. This chain 
consists of a cord which swells into ganglia every 
few inches. From these ganglia nerves are given 
off which are distributed to all the great internal 
organs of the body, the heart, lungs, stomach, 
liver, kidneys, intestines, and especially to the 
muscular coats of the arteries. It is a striking 
peculiarity of the sympathetic nervous system 
that its nerves follow very closely the blood-ves- 
sels. Starting from the heart they envelop the 
arteries in a network of fine interlacing nerves, 
which follow them in all their ramifications. The 
semi -lunar ganglia are often called the solar 
plexus, for the nerves radiate from them in 
every direction, as the rays from the sun. These 
radiating nerves control the action of the ab- 
dominal organs. 

The action of the sympathetic nervous sys- 
tem is not yet thoroughly understood, but, un- 
like the other nervous system, it is not under 
the control of the will. It acts in its own pe- 
culiar way — is not hampered by the will or 
interfered with by any caprice of the individual. 
It cannot think. It can scarcely feel, though 
experiments show there is slight sensation in it. 



The Sympathetic Nervous System, 31 

It knows nothing that is going on in the world ; 
it probably knows nothing of what is going on 
in the body, and yet it has control of the most 
important functions of organic life. It hastens, 
retards, increases or diminishes the supply of 
blood to any organ or part; thus providing 
for secretion, excretion and the maintenance of 
heat. 

The action of the sympathetic nervous sys- 
tem is slow. It takes time for it to respond 
to any nervous stimulus. In this respect it dif- 
fers from the other system, w T hich responds at 
once to any excitement. Once excited, how- 
ever, its action is uniform and regular. The 
peristaltic action of the bowels, for instance, is 
under the control of the sympathetic system, 
and the movement is slow and continuous. 
This slowness of action may be seen in another 
way. When a person has been exposed to cold 
and wet, the brain, or cerebrospinal system, re- 
cognizes it at once ; but the pleurisy, which may 
result from this exposure, is regulated by the 
sympathetic nervous system ; and this does not 
appear at once : it may be hours or days before 
we are sick. So, too, the recuperation from an 
attack of sickness is largely under the manage- 



32 The Sympathetic Nervous System. 

ment of this system, and so it requires days, weeks, 
months, and perhaps years, for a person to re- 
cover from a serious illness. For this reason, 
when we are warned by uneasy sensations that 
there is danger in exposure to wind, rain, snow 
and wet, we should avoid them. 

The sympathetic nervous system is differ- 
ently developed in different people. In the 
thin, poorly-nourished dyspeptic it is generally 
deficiently developed. In the person of sanguine 
temperament, ruddy face, and round, plump and 
healthy body, these nerves are well developed, 
and they keep the body well nourished by send- 
ing plenty of blood to the tissues, even though 
the brain may suffer for it. When this system 
is strong one recovers from sickness rapidly — 
recovers from fatigue in a short time. 

There should be a harmony of development 
between the two nervous systems. Then they 
help each other, and make a round, complete 
character; but this is not always the case, for 
where the cerebro-spinal predominates it is apt 
to rob the sympathetic of nourishment, so that 
sleep is not perfect and nutrition is incomplete. 
From such a condition of things come nervous 
exhaustion, depression of spirits and melancholy. 



The Sympathetic Nervous System. 33 

On the other hand, when the sympathetic 
6ystem predominates, there is too much nutri- 
tion and growth of body, but not enough mental 
and muscular activity. All should strive to 
maintain a harmony of development between 
these nerves, and never tax both powerfully at 
the same time — as would be done in using the 
brain vigorously just after a hearty meal. In 
such a case the sympathetic system would be 
robbed of blood, and digestion rendered im- 
perfect. 



CHAPTER V. 

How the Nerves Act. 

In the preceding chapters a general view of 
the nervous system has been given. We have 
seen that it consists of a brain and nerve-centers, 
a spinal cord, and different nerves for communi- 
cating with all parts of the body. We have also 
seen that there is a sympathetic nervous system, 
having control of the function of growth and 
repair, or of organic life. With this knowledge 
in view, let us see if we can find out how it 
is that nervous action takes place. We will 
not enter into a long and elaborate discus- 
sion of the subject. It is too intricate for this 
place. Still, a simple statement will aid us 
when we come to discuss the management of the 
nerves and the cure of nervous disorders. Let 
any person survey his own sensations for an hour, 



How the Nerves Act. 35 

and find out, if he can, in what they consist. 
You are pricked with a pin hidden somewhere 
in your clothing. It is a very simple thing. 
The sharp point impinges itself against a nerve 
— perhaps lacerates or irritates it. Now how 
do the nerves act ? They have no voice ; they 
cannot speak; but only act in their own way. 
They can feel. A limited, wholesome amount 
of feeling is pleasurable, but an excess of it is 
painful. Now w r hat are the phenomena. The 
brain takes cognizance of the pain caused by the 
pin, finds out where it is, and the hand removes 
it. How did the news of the pricking reach the 
brain ? How did the command of the brain to 
set the muscles to work reach into the arms and 
hands ? Let us see if it can be made clear : The 
nerve-cells, lacerated by the pin, contain a cer- 
tain amount of nutriment — digested and elabo- 
rated food — in a condition of what is called un- 
stable equilibrium — that is to say, the slightest 
disturbance causes it to explode, as powder does 
in a gun by the fall of the hammer on the de- 
tonating cap. This explosion generates force, 
molecular movement, which is conveyed along 
the nerve till it comes to another larger nerve- 
cell, or collection of cells, called a ganglion, con- 



36 How the Nerves Act. 

taining more matter in unstable equilibrium, 
which again, so to say, explodes, generating 
more force ; and the little disturbance starting 
in the nerves of the skin travels to the brain at 
the rate of thirty feet per second. "Reaching the 
brain, which is a large center stored with nutri- 
ment easily disturbed, a certain amount is again 
exploded, generating force sufficient to set the 
will in motion, and flowing along the nerves to 
the muscles sets a sufficient number of them in 
motion to remove the pin. Or we may explain 
the action in another way : You are standing on 
a street corner, waiting for an omnibus. It ap- 
proaches. You lift your hand, a very simple 
thing to do, and the driver sets his whole frame 
in motion to stop his horses and omnibus, that 
you may get inside. How can so slight a move- 
ment of your arm produce such results on the 
nervous system of another ? Thus : A ray of 
light reflected from your hand struck very gently 
on the sensitive retina of his eye. This retina is 
composed, among other things, of cones of nerv- 
ous matter containing nutriment ready to ex- 
plode on the application of a ray of light, and 
the force generated by the explosion traveling 
like a wave up the nerve to the brain, where 



Conditions of Healthy Nervous Action. 37 

more nervous matter explodes, and motion is 
generated, which sets the whole nervous and 
muscular system of the driver in action and 
produces the desired result. Or take another 
case : A sudden, startling noise strikes your ear, 
and you jump, perhaps you shriek. It is only 
an explosion of nervous substance. If we could 
see the action of the nerves we should find that 
life is a continual explosion of nerve material. 
You sit quietly in your seat at the opera, and the 
vibrations of the air caused by the instruments 
and voices of the musicians striking on the 
nerves of the ear keep up a series of explosions 
in the brain in the form of delightful sensations of 
music. Thus through the nerves of the ear, eye, 
mouth, nose and skin come from without multitu- 
dinous causes of nervous action. Could anything 
be more beautiful, more wonderful? revealing the 
creative power in a universe which never sleeps. 

CONDITIONS OF HEALTHY NERVOUS ACTION. 

The first requisite to normal and vigorous 
nervous action is good digestion, in order to 
supply the nerves with abundant and rich blood, 
from which power may be obtained. 

The next necessity is that the blood be equally 



38 How the Nerves Act. 

distributed to the nervous apparatus, and those 
organs that transform its latent force into sen- 
sible force. 

Still another condition of healthy nervous 
action is that the blood be well supplied with 
oxygen. 

It is also necessary that it be not loaded with 
the products of decomposition, which choke the 
play of the organs as ashes choke the burning of 
the fire in a grate. This is secured by a 
healthy action of the skin, lungs, kidneys and 
bowels. 

Nerve substance does not bear pressure well. 
Pressure on the brain stops its action ; pressure 
on a nerve trunk modifies or even prevents its 
action altogether; pressure on the large nerve 
of any limb so alters its conducting power as to 
cause it to be sensibly observed in a feeling of 
numbness. 

Another condition of vigorous nervous action 
is a normal degree of bodily heat. This may be 
shown in many ways. The amount of nervous 
activity in a cold-blooded animal is less than in 
a warm-blooded one ; but when the cold-blooded 
creature is warmed by heat its nervous force is 
increased : and as cold weather approaches and 



Conditions of Healthy Nervous Action. 39 

the temperature of the body diminishes, the cold- 
blooded creature stops generating nerve force 
almost entirely, and hibernates till heat sets its 
blood in motion again, and permits the generation 
of nervous force once more. So in warm-blooded 
animals (in man, for instance), if the bodily tem- 
perature is lowered to a certain point, as is the 
case in exposure to severe, long-continued cold 
without food, the generation of nervous force is 
diminished, and ceases altogether; the person 
becomes drowsy, unable to keep himself awake, 
and, if not speedily rescued, dies. 

It has already been remarked that an abund- 
ant supply of good blood is essential to healthy 
nervous action. General bloodlessness is a prin- 
cipal cause of inactivity of the nervous sys- 
tem. Temporary loss of blood causes fainting 
and suspension of nervous activity in the brain. 
If the blood is deficient for any length of time, 
the nervous explosions of which we have spoken 
are feeble and infrequent. If the heart is feeble 
and unable to supply the brain and extremities 
M 7 ith blood, nervous action is limited. Aneurism 
of an artery which prevents the blood from cir- 
culating freely produces the same effect, and 
when a clot of blood plugs up an artery it may 



40 How the N'erves Act. 

cause paralysis of the brain or any part of the 
body. Notice, also, when the hands become 
very cold, and the supply of blood is deficient in 
them, how stiff they are, and how difficult it is 
for them to obey the commands of the will. Not 
only must the blood be abundant, but it must be 
rich. Poor blood will not supply the nerves 
with the material for generating nerve force. It 
must contain those substances which they can 
use. Oxygen must be abundant, and the car- 
bonic acid must be carried off as fast as gen- 
erated. Urea, if allowed to remain in the 
blood, will alone put an end to healthy nervous 
action. 

Last of all, the nerves themselves must be 
sound and healthy. They must be continuous in 
their substance. A nerve which has been cut 
can no more convey nervous impressions than a 
telegraph wire which has been broken can be 
made to convey a message. Also a brain which 
has been wounded or injured by overwork, by 
excesses of any kind, by intemperance in eating 
or drinking, by unnatural stimulation and the use 
of narcotics, will neither generate nor distribute 
nervous energy in an abundant and healthful 
manner. 



CHAPTER YL 

Has Nervous Activity Any Limit? 

In this chapter we ask, and shall try to an- 
swer, the question, Is there a limit to nervous 
action ? There is a general belief current, even 
among scholars, that a man may go on acquiring 
knowledge as long as life and health remain, if 
he will only make all the application in his 
power. It is, perhaps, unfortunate for us that 
this is not so ; but it is not, and we might as 
well know it first as last. There is a limit to 
the power of the brain to act, and there is a 
limit to our acquiring power ; and this is largely 
determined by the amount of nervous substance 
one possesses, or, in other words, by the size of 
the brain. There are some subjects none can 
become proficient in, and even in those in which 
we are most skillful we forget easily what has 



42 Has Nervous Activity Any Limit? 

been acquired, unless we constantly review oui 1 
acquisitions. 

We all find there is a limit to our power 
of physical endurance. Athletes find there is a 
limit beyond which training must not be carried, 
or it will cause weakness rather than strength. 
Their best performances are limited quantities, 
which cannot be increased. Sportsmen find 
there is a limit to the speed of their best horses. 
Beyond a certain speed none can go. In the 
Lifting Cure we find the patient when he begins 
is able to increase his strength, perhaps, five 
pounds a day, and this goes on maybe for 
weeks. Then comes a time when one pound is 
as much as can be added to the previous day's 
weight, and finally he reaches a point beyond 
which he cannot go with safety. 

It is the same with our nervous systems. 
The schoolboy and the schoolgirl find this out 
before they have studied long. They know there 
are some problems in mathematics they cannot 
solve, and some one boy can solve and another 
can not. The young, strong and ambitious often 
rebel at this, and struggle against it, hoping, be- 
lieving that they only lack courage ; but in the 
end they all find their limit, their vanity takes 



Has Nervous Activity Any Limit? 43 

a back seat and they labor in their sphere, doing 
such work as Nature has rendered suitable to 
their abilities. 

The comparative ability of men is also an 
interesting subject. Between the extremes of 
intellectual strength and weakness there is a 
great distance. Even in physical strength this 
is true. One man may be forty times as strong 
as another in his muscles. The greatest weight 
which can be lifted by one person in the Lifting 
Cure may be only forty pounds, while the heavi- 
est by another has been over twelve hundred 
pounds. Now forty is contained in twelve hun- 
dred thirty times. There is every reason to 
believe that the difference in the mental power 
of different persons may be far greater than the 
difference in their physical power. We have 
not, however, the same accurate means of de- 
termining this difference. Galton has shown, in 
his admirable work on " Hereditary Genius," 
that among the wranglers at Cambridge for the 
highest honors the lowest number of marks is 
often thirty times less than the highest. Now as 
the wranglers are picked men, the difference in 
mental power between the best wrangler and the 
intellectually weakest man in Cambridge is much 



44: Has Nervous Activity Any Limit? 

more than thirty times, it may be sixty, or even 
one hundred, times. If we measure man's men- 
tal power by his ability to acquire knowledge, 
then one man may, for aught we know, have one 
thousand times as much strength as another man. 
If we measure it by his power to originate ideas 
and produce original thought, then the difference 
is equally great. Estimate the difference be- 
tween Daniel Webster and the smallest pettifog- 
ging lawyer in the country, and we find the 
difference between them immenseo 

In order to apply hygienic law to the brain 
and nerves we must know the limit of mental 
power. If we think there is no limit, we deceive 
ourselves, and do harm. If, on the other hand, 
we know the extent of our powers, we can work 
within such limitations as are safe. 

There comes also a time when knowledge 
decays in our brains, and we forget what we 
once knew well. This may be caused by weak- 
ness, or deficiency of brain substance. All our 
powers are required to retain what knowledge 
we have, and if we acquire more we must forget 
something we already know. We lose at one end 
as much as we gain at the other. There is not 
room in the brain for all knowledge, and the hy- 



Has Nervous Activity Any Limit? 45 

g;iene of the nervous system demands that we do 
not burden ourselves with that which is useless, 
It requires quite as many brain cells to acquire 
and retain useless as useful knowledge, a good as 
a bad thought. If this was understood by pa- 
rents and educators^ much time might be saved 
and the value of life increased; for our brain 
substance would be reserved for only the best 
thoughts, as the wise farmer reserves his best 
soil for the most useful crops. A soil first 
occupied by weeds is never so good afterward 
as if the first crop had been a useful plant. 
A brain once occupied by a great vice is never 
quite so safe as the brain which has been trained 
in the acquisition of useful knowledge. 
y The health of the nervous system is greatly 
benefited by a strong will and by good judgment; 
persons with these possessions may never become 
geniuses, but they will become reliable citizens, 
in whom we may place confidence. Great genius 
is a nervous disease. It can only exist where all 
the nervous tissue is occupied w T ith one class of 
thoughts to the exclusion of another class, both of 
which are necessary to mental health. 



CHAPTEK TIL 
Nervous Exhaustion. 

The word " exhaustion " is significant, and 
easily understood. It comes from two words — 
ex, out ; and hourire, to draw. Put together, of 
course we have exhaustion : to draw out, to drain 
off, till nothing is left. ¥e exhaust the water in 
a well by drawing it out, by pumping it dry. 
We exhaust our forests by cutting them down. 
We exhaust our resources by extravagant living. 
We become physically exhausted by excessive 
labor, strain, dissipation. Physical exhaustion 
has reference to the whole body, including the 
nerves. The power of the stomach may be ex- 
hausted, causing dyspepsia. The power of the 
muscles may be exhausted, causing physical 
weakness and inability to walk, to lift any weight 
or to perform any physical labor. The muscles 



JSTervous Exhaustion. 4.7 

may be exhausted in several ways : they may be 
exhausted by excessive labor, by inability of the 
stomach to digest food from which blood is de- 
rived, by fevers and various diseases, by great 
strain, by inability of the brain to supply nerve 
force. The brain and nerves may be exhausted 
in the same way. Exhaustion may be temporary 
or permanent ; a day's labor may cause tempo- 
rary exhaustion. There is a temporary loss of 
nervous tissue and nervous supply, but a good 
night's rest, with appropriate food, restores it. 
Permanent exhaustion comes from the destroy- 
ing of the source of nervous supply, or the per- 
manent injury of the nerves themselves. This 
will be made clear by a comparison of the nerv- 
ous system to the old-fashioned saw-mill, located 
on a small stream of water on the border of a 
wood. A dam across the stream, uniting the 
opposite banks, stops the water in its course, and 
it backs up and fills the banks till the water 
overflows. Now the accumulated water is turned 
through^ sluice onto the wheel, the mill is set in 
operation and does the work of hundreds of men. 
An insufficient rain, or a failure of the swamps 
and springs, exhausts the water supply, and the 
mill stops till the water accumulates to fill the 



4:8 Nervous Exhaustion. 

reservoir again, when the mill moves on once 
more. If the supply is only temporarily cut off, 
the delay of work is temporary ; if permanently 
cut off, the mill cannot be advantageously used, 
and is taken down, or a steam-engine is put in 
and motive force is manufactured by means of 
fire and water, which are more under human 
control than the fall of the rain. The nervous 
6ystem is very much like a machine. It must 
have its daily and hourly supply of force, to 
keep it in action. We take better care of 
our machinery and tools than we do of our 
bodies. "We often treat ourselves as if we were 
worth less than our horses, our dogs, our axes 
and saws, which cost us little, and which, even 
without care, may last a lifetime. 

The victims of nervous exhaustion are numer- 
ous. They meet us at every turn. Their variety 
is numberless. There is the mother, exhausted 
with child-bearing and the care of the household, 
by sleepless nights and the insufficient digestion 
and assimilation of food. There is the woman 
of fashion, whose beauty has faded and whose 
charms are gone. The demands of society have 
robbed her of health, and she is now a wreck 
both mentally and physically. There is the 



JVervous Exhaustion. 49 

hypochondriac, whose gloomy views of life, 
whose depression of spirits, whose mental debil- 
ity, whose indisposition to activity, are a source 
of constant pain to himself and his friends. 
There is the melancholy one, whose dejected 
spirits and cast-down manner, whose mental 
alienation and dismal condition, lowers the hap- 
piness of all who come in contact with him. 
Then there is the victim of sexual excesses, 
whose nervous state often borders on, and runs 
into, insanity: he suffers pangs of torture un- 
known in almost any other disease. We might 
add to this list nervous exhaustion from excessive 
care, great anxiety, overstrain, business ventures 
which turn out badly. All these are easily re- 
cognized. There are also other milder forms of 
exhaustion not causing hypochondria, melan- 
cholia, or mental agony, but leaving the patient 
more or less depressed and unhappy, as when 
there is irritability, fretfulness, and a disposition 
to criticise, to find fault, to scold, to become 
peevish, to become easily offended, to become 
excited on trivial occasions, to magnify trifles, 
to cry easily, to get angry and fly into a passion 
without a cause, to sleep poorly, to be dainty 
about food, to be unable to keep the mind on 



50 Nervous Exhaustion. 

one thing, but to let it run from one subject to 
another, to be unable to hold a steady hand, or 
speak connectedly on any topic, even inability 
to utter a sentence logically and coherently. 
These, and many more symptoms, are often the 
result of a weakened condition of the nervous 
Bystem — in short, a mild form of nervous ex- 
haustion. 

Many do not recognize these forms of mental 
obliquity as diseases, but as moral defects, and 
treat them by censure. They should be recog- 
nized as physical diseases, and treated by hy- 
giene. Children often receive unjust treatment 
from parents for nervousness when they should 
receive medical or hygienic treatment. 

These nervous evils endanger the prosperity 
and mental character of the race. Their capa- 
bility of being propagated is very great. The 
offspring of nervously exhausted parents are 
pretty sure to possess the same traits in an in- 
creased degree. Moderation, and a pleased, 
happy state, are the normal conditions of the 
human mind. Nervousness, indeed all nervous 
disorders, so to say, distort the harmony of life, 
hinder the haste which they generate, put an end 
to contemplation, and act in an unfriendly man- 



JFervous Exhaustion. 51 

ner upon the normal processes of life. Where 
nervousness dwells bodily soundness of the indi- 
vidual cannot prevail ; but liability to extremes 
of action and reaction is pretty sure to be pres- 
ent. The person is now on the heights, now in 
the depths ; now joyous, now so miserable and 
unhappy that he thinks he never had a pleasant 
moment in his life, and he never hopes for one 
in the future. 

The causes of nervous exhaustion may be 
summed up in the following general heads : 

1. They are inherited. 

2. They arise from defective nutrition. 

3. From overstrain. 

4. From the use of stimulants. 

5. From insufficient sleep. 

6. From indulgence in vice and passion. 

7. From scrofula. 

8. From anything that deteriorates the phys- 
ical constitution and lowers the health of che 
body. 

These causes, singly or united, bring about a 
sort of nervous bankruptcy of the individual. 
As has been said before, the normal activity of 
the nervous system is dependent on rich, healthy 
blood. Nervously exhausted people usually have 



52 Nervous Exhaustion. 

thin, poor blood. It is deficient in fibrin and 
blood corpuscles. There is not force enough 
stored up in it to keep the wheels of life in a 
high state of activity, and so they move slowly, 
feebly, painfully, or hardly at all. 

In our age nervous exhaustion is in the as- 
cendant. It crops out in every direction. Our 
hothouse education promotes it, by cultivating 
the mind at the expense of the body. Our sed- 
entary ways of living promote it. Our haste to 
get rich, our risks in business, our anxieties, 
our cares, all help to bring on nervous exhaus- 
tion. Only the prudent and well organized es- 
cape, and even these are sometimes engulfed by the 
stupidity and treachery of others. It is time for 
us to consider this matter in the light of science 
and common-sense, and see if something cannot 
be done to relieve our generation from the curse 
of nervous exhaustion, and show people how to 
conduct their lives so that peace and serenity 
shall take the place of haste and excitement, and 
all their attending evils. In another chapter we 
shall point out some of the remedies which have 
been found most useful in cases of nervous ex- 
haustion. 



CHAPTER YIIL 
How to Cure Nervousness. 

To lay down broad rules and general prin- 
ciples for the treatment and cure of nervousness 
is by no means an easy task. However, " a 
stout heart to a stiff brae," as they say in canny 
Scotland, and we have at least a guiding hope 
that this chapter may be read with interest by 
very many persons, and prove beneficial to not 
a few. 

Those who suffer from nervousness — and their 
name is legion — have our sincerest sympathy and 
pity, and they know that they are but little ac- 
customed to either from the too cold-hearted 
world. It is characteristic of poor human nature 
to pity only that suffering which can be seen, 
and those who to all outward appearances are 
hale, healthy and strong, yet who know and feel 



54 How to Cure Nervousness. 

that they are not as others are, must as a rule 
brood over their sufferings in the silence of their 
own heavy hearts, until they make up their 
minds they will work out their own salvation. 

" There can't be much the matter with you, 
at all events." Do we not hear this sentence 
made daily use of toward some one who "com- 
plains without apparent cause. Would those 
who make this unfeeling remark be surprised to 
learn that a man may be to all appearances 
strong — nay, he may even be, so far as muscular 
power is concerned, vigorous and capable of pro- 
longed physical exercise, while he is at the same 
time suffering from nervous disorders which 
make his existence a wearisome burden to him, 
and shorten his life. 

In the human body there are, as already 
stated, two distinct nervous systems. The brain 
and spinal cord are the centers of one set, viz., 
the set of animal life, which are distributed to 
the various muscles of the body and to the skin. 
Any one of these nerves may be described as a 
filament or thread, or prolongation of the brain 
itself, thickest where it joins the brain or spinal 
column, and all along its lower course dividing 
and subdividing into smaller and smaller bunches 



How to Cure JVervousness. 55 

until the minutest and most remote muscular 
fiber and the smallest speck of skin are supplied 
with a loop or filament of nervous matter. Judge 
of the size and fineness of these when we tell 
you that you cannot prick the skin or flesh with 
the point of the finest needle without piercing 
one or many of them. One cannot think for a 
moment of the delicate and intricate machinery 
of the nervous system without exclaiming to 
himself, " How fearfully and wonderfully are we 
made !" The nerve tubes themselves, which are 
the chief components of nervous and brain mat- 
ter, vary in size from one-24,000th up to one- 
1,200th part of an inch, and the nerve cells from 
one-8, 000th to one-200th part of an inch in di- 
ameter. Is it any wonder that the nervous sys- 
tem should be easily and often put out of order. 
There are two sets of nervous filaments bound 
up together in the same sheath to form each 
nerve, just as two sets of telegraphic wires might 
be bound together, isolated and placed in the 
same tube. The one set of nerve filaments is 
called the motor, and they carry the will from 
the brain to the muscles you propose to call into 
action. 

I " will" to dip my pen in the ink, and the 



56 How to Cure Nervousness. 

will is carried downward by the motor filaments 
of the nerves of my arm, and brings into play 
the muscles which move the extremities toward 
the inkstand, and here, in writing, the eye plays 
no unimportant part : to wit, I have forgotten to 
dot that last i. The omission is painted on the 
retina of my eye, the nerves of the retina communi- 
cate with the brain, and the brain, well knowing 
what printers are, sends instant orders to fingers 
to correct the omission. The other set of nerve 
filaments take cognizance of the sensations of 
skin and muscles. They are called excitor fila- 
ments, because they excite the brain to action. 
To give a common example : You slip out of bed 
some morning and tread on what is sometimes 
called the business end of a carpet-tack. The 
nature of the accident is at once telegraphed to 
the brain through the excitor filaments, and the 
order to lift the foot is sent back by the motor 
filaments. But until that message goes and the 
other comes, you are powerless to move your 
foot. It is a sort of telegraphic work, and the 
brain is the head office. Take another illustra- 
tion : A whale in the Arctic ocean is pierced 
in the tail with a harpoon. The tail sends word 
to the brain, " I am struck with a harpoon,'' and 



How to Cure Nervousness. 57 

at once the brain, on receiving this message, if 
the whale is wise and able, sends back word, 
" Strike and capsize the boat," or, what is more 
likely, " Swim .out of the way"; whatever order 
comes back the tail tries to execute. 

The other system of nerves is also of tho 
greatest importance to the animal economy. 
These are called the nerves of organic or vege- 
tative life. Lying in front of the spinal column 
is the chain of ganglia or nerve-knots. They 
communicate with other ganglia among the in- 
testines, and with the spinal cord. From these 
ganglia proceed the nerves which are distributed 
to the internal organs of the body, heart, liver, 
stomach, etc., and to the blood-vessels, also. 

Although this second system of nerves is 
connected with the first, and to a certain extent 
sympathizes with them, its action is beyond the 
control of our wills. The ganglia from which 
they arise are, so to say, each little frames them- 
selves, little Leyden jars filled with the electricity 
of life itself. Now, if this system be weakened, 
we can easily understand how a man or woman 
may be ill and nervous and not show it much 
outwardly, for the two sets of nerves are to a 
great extent independent of each other. We 



58 How to Cure Nervousness. 

have, indeed, as the immortal Bichat well says, 
" two lives, an organic or vegetative, and an ani- 
mal life." 

It is on account of some defect in the former 
life, the organic man, that the largest number of 
persons suffer from nervousness ; and it is pleas- 
ant to be able to tell those sufferers that a ma- 
jority of them can be cured. 

We will now explain the causes and pathol- 
ogy of nervousness, and its general symptoms ; 
when the reader will be able to understand the 
rationale of treatment. 

Nature moves in a mysterious way her won- 
ders to perform. Chemically, brain matter con- 
sists of water, fat, albumen, ozmazone, and phos- 
phorus ; but the inner workings of the nerves, 
the mystery of the nervous fluid, are hidden from 
mortal man, and science has not yet lifted the 
vail that enshrouds them. One thing we know, 
however, as the blood, rich or poor, pure or im- 
pure, that supplies the nerves, is, so will the 
nervous power be. Again, if the nervous power 
be small, the heart itself being regulated by that 
power, it naturally follows that this organ acts 
feebly and irregularly, and the blood is not cir- 



How to Cure Nervousness. 59 

culated sufficiently to nourish the nerves; so 
they, so to speak, starve. 

Seeing that the nerves must be supplied with 
pure blood in proper quantity to enable them to 
do their duty, can we wonder if neglect of the 
common rules of health shall cause a feeling of 
illness, an unstrung state of the system, and mis- 
ery and wretchedness ? The nerves get poisoned 
with impure blood, starved with thin blood. 
The blood may be poisoned by bile, by alcohol, 
by bad food, by tobacco, tea, coffee, opium, hen- 
bane, hops, chloral, by breathing polluted air, 
neglect of the skin. One thing follows — nervous 
exhaustion. 

The causes of nervousness above enumerated 
act on the system through the blood. Other 
causes act on the nerves themselves. Mental 
anxiety and worry is not one of the least of 
these, especially if continued for any length of 
time. The loss of sleep is another ; so, too, are 
excessive exposure to heat and cold, overwork, 
bodily fatigue, too much brain work. 

The symptoms of nervousness are too many 
to mention, atod vary in different subjects. The 
patient knows and feels he is ill, but cannot tell 
where or how. He becomes fretful and peevish, 



60 How to Cure Nervousness. 

and angry without a cause. He is easily startled, 
complains of irregular action of the heart, sleeps 
badly, and this loss of sleep spoils the next day's 
happiness. Resolution and courage fail, memory 
is impaired, he becomes tired and easily confused. 
He is subject to fits of melancholy, continually 
makes himself unhappy. He looks on the dark 
side, and seems to have no silver ray to line the 
clouds of life. If the nerves of motion become 
weakened, the sufferer has little pleasure in either 
bodily or mental exertion. The appetite fails, 
becomes capricious, inconstant ; the patient com- 
plains of a bad feeling, a pain in the head, flatu- 
lence, irregularity of bowels. Woe be to him 
now if he flies to alcohol to stimulate his failing 
powers ! 

We shall not here enter into the symptoms 
of hysteria, so often the result of nervousness in 
both men and women. 

Now, from whatever cause or combination of 
causes nervousness has been produced, if happi- 
ness and health are to be restored, the causes 
must be removed and the injury they have occa- 
sioned be repaired. For, in proportion to the 
weakness of a man's system and the enfeeble- 
ment of his nerves, will be the liability of his 



How to Cure Nervousness. 61 

falling a victim to other and more fatal maladies; 
and thus it is that every day we find such diseases 
as bronchitis, consumption, Bright's disease, brain 
disease and insanity following at the heels of 
nervousness. 

The indications for treatment are fourfold. 
First, we must remove the cause, restore the 
tone of the heart, improve the blood. All in- 
jurious habits must be given up ; late hours and 
intemperance in eating abandoned ; smoking, if 
practiced, stopped. This done, the patient is on 
the road to a cure ; for Nature is very kind when 
she has a chance, though she is dreadfully cruel 
when abused. 

The food is most important. It must be 
abundant and wholesome — neither too much nor 
too little. It should not be sloppy, and soups 
had better be avoided so long as solid food can 
be taken. Rise from the table feeling you have 
had enough, but not oppressed with what you 
have eaten. Many a man has lived to old age 
by following this rule. The bread should be 
stale, and no very heating food taken. 

Eight hours' sleep should be taken every 
night if possible. This alone will nearly cure. 
" Early to bed and early to rise " should be the 



62 How to Cure Nervousness. 

inotto. Sleep is the salvation of the nervous 
system. When there is strength, a cool bath, 
short and quickly over, with much friction under 
a sheet, should be taken every morning, and a 
reaction secured. Without a reaction much harm 
results. 

The exercise should be moderate and pleas- 
ant. Riding, driving, rowing, light physical la- 
bor, are all good. Those who live in cities and 
cannot enjoy out-of-door labor or riding, should 
adopt systematic habits of exercise. Some form 
of gymnastics will be very serviceable. The 
Lifting Cure, if rightly used, has great value in 
the cure of nervousness. It seems to be able to 
restore the lost equilibrium of the system, and 
bring the weak parts of the body up in strength 
to a par with the strong parts. The passive 
exercises of the Movement Cure are also excel- 
lent, and any one may learn from books how to 
apply it to himself, if he will. Breakfast early ; 
dine at one or two, and sup two hours before 
going to bed ; drink no tea. Take no narcotics 
to make you sleep. A few. raw oysters before 
bedtime are worth all the narcotics in the world, 
are easily digested, and furnish material for re- 
storing nervous tissue and blood. If you wake 



How to Cure Nervousness. 63 

tip in the middle of the night and cannot go 
to sleep, eat slowly a crust of bed ; this will 
often help a nervous person to go to sleep again. 

A change of scene, air, with cheerful society, 
and sea-bathing, are excellent agents for curing 
nervousness. 

Avoid physic — it exhausts the tone of the 
system, which you ought to restore. 

Above all, keep up a good heart, and a firm 
faith in all that is good and true. 



CHAPTER IX. 

The Cube of Nervousness — Continued. 

DIET, REST FROM HEAD-WORK. 

The eminent C. B. Radcliffe, M. D., Fellow 
of the Royal College of Physicians of London, 
in one of his able lectures on Cerebral or Brain 
Exhaustion, furnishes us with some excellent 
hints concerning Diet and Rest, which we quote 
quite fully, as what he says is applicable to a 
very large class of persons suffering from a sort 
of bankruptcy of the faculties of the mind — a 
kind of bankruptcy which, we are sorry to say, 
is quite too common and too little guarded 
against. Dr. Radcliffe speaks concerning food 
first, and says : 

" I confess to being a heretic in matters of 
diet. Do what I will, I cannot bring myself to 
accept the current belief that butchers' meat is 



Diet) Rest from Head- Work. 65 

food par excellence^ and that all other food is 
little more than ' padding.' On the contrary, I 
feel convinced that views and practices in this 
respect have changed infinitely for the worse 
daring the last few years, and that herein, per- 
haps, may be found one main reason why various 
nervous disorders are so numerous and often so 
difficult to deal with. 

" Few persons with any practical experience, 
I think, will maintain that the diet of 'training,' 
which is relatively rich in lean meat and poor in 
the other constituents of diet, especially in the 
oleaginous, can be kept up for any length of time 
with absolute impunity. The fact, indeed, is 
simply this, that an extraordinary degree of mus- 
cular strength is got up, not by the diet simply, 
but by the whole plan of training, in six weeks 
or thereabouts, and that afterward the man in 
training gets out of 'condition'; every day per- 
ceptibly losing muscular energy and firmness 
and pluck, and becoming headachy, feverish, and 
out of sorts in every way. 

" Few persons, also, will nowadays be pre- 
pared to contend uncompromisingly for Banting- 
ism, which is practically the diet of training 
carried still further to extremes on the side of 



66 The Cure of Nervousness. 

meat ; and not a few, I take it, will have begtm 
to suspect that there may even be something 
actually hurtful in the practice. For myself I 
will simply say that I have quite come to a 
conclusion on the subject, and that I very much 
doubt whether there ever was a fallacy which, 
to use a common phrase, has more effectually 
'played into the hands' of medical men — of 
those especially who are sought after by persons 
suffering from disorders of the nervous system. 

"These are extreme cases, but after all not 
bo extreme as to be beside the purpose. Often, 
indeed, I meet with persons who are just in the 
state of those who have been over-training, who 
are not ' up ' to any work, bodily or mental, and 
who tell you that they cannot for the life of them 
tell why they are so, for they have not been tak- 
ing it out of themselves by work of any kind, 
and they have been doing all they could to keep 
up their strength : drinking beef tea by the 
quart, eating meat three times a day, etc. 

" It is certainly possible for people to enjoy 
excellent health upon the most different kinds of 
diet. No doubt there are individuals who take 
kindly to animal food, and others who do not do 
60 ; but all the evidence, as I can read it, is 



Diet j Rest from Head- Work. 67 

against the notion that meat is to be looked upon 
as the food which must be had at any price. At 
all events,, I cannot help but think that the 
'present practice of urging persons at all weakly, 
especially children, to eat as much meat as they 
can, may have not a little to do in causing the 
development of many nervous disorders, and in 
deranging the health in many other ways be- 
sides ; perhaps (as the inquiries of Dr. Parkes 
would lead one to expect) in causing liver and 
kidney and other glandular diseases by over- 
taxing the eliminating power of these organs. 

" It is high time, I take it, now that meat of 
all kinds is only to be had at almost famine 
prices, that people, and especially the poor, 
should be taught to think that animal food is not 
so essential as they believe it to be. It is high 
time, for instance, that the English should be 
taught to imitate the French in their diet. But 
I must not dilate as I would fain do upon these 
matters, nor must I attempt to lay down any 
definite rules of diet. Indeed, all that I must 
allow myself to do is to reassert my belief that 
excess of animal food, relative or actual, is a 
very important cause of many disorders of the 
nervous system ; and that in the prevention and 



68 The Cure of Nervousness. 

treatment of these disorders it is all-important 
that the oleaginous and farinaceous articles of 
diet, rather than the nitrogenous, should be fully 
supplied. I maintain, indeed as I have long 
done, that the nerve tissue (which consists in 
large measure of a kind of fat) is starved if the 
hydrocarbons are withheld ; and that this with- 
holding is one main reason for the speedy 
breaking down in training or in Bantingism ; 
and I further believe that this is not the only 
way in which the want of hydrocarbons operates 
mischievously. Indeed, the fact that muscular 
work shows itself in the amount produced, not 
of urea, but of carbonic acid, convinces me that 
the hydrocarbons are necessary for action, as 
well as for nutrition, in nerve and muscle ; are 
necessary, perhaps, in keeping up the electrical 
charge of nerve and muscle, which, as I believe, 
has so much to do in nervous action and muscu- 
lar action. Possibly, also, these hydrocarbons 
may have some work to do as ' floating fuel,' 
though not much ; for if much work of this kind 
had been required of them, it is not easy to be- 
lieve that the natives of hot countries w r ould have 
been so ready to stoke themselves with oily mat- 



Walking Overestimated. 69 

ter; the Hindoo, for example, with ghee, and 
the Italian with olive oil. 

WALKLNG OVERESTIMATED. 

" I am also very much disposed to maintain 
that too much stress may be laid upon the im- 
portance of walking exercise in very many cases, 
in cerebral exhaustion among the rest. Of this 
I am confident that very many cases of the latter 
disorder come under notice, in which over- 
walking would seem to be no insignificant cause 
of breaking down in health, and in which little 
or no progress is made toward recovery until the 
patient begins to economize his strength in this 
direction ; in standing quite as much as in walk- 
ing, perhaps more. It would often seem as if 
the amount of vital power at the disposal of the 
individual did not allow of much head-work and 
much leg-w r ork together, though quite sufficient 
to allow of a fair amount of either kind of w T ork 
singly ; and that, under these circumstances, if 
the head-work must be done, it is expedient to 
avoid walking exercise rather than to seek op- 
portunities for taking it; and often to settle 
dow r n in an easy chair and have a nap rather 
than to walk at all. It is a common thing for a 



70 The Cure of Nervousness. 

person suffering from cerebral exhaustion to find 
that he cannot stand or walk, except for a short 
time, and that if he persists he soon becomes 
faint and breathless and unable to talk, though 
comparatively fresh and well before he began to 
walk and stand. It is also a common thing in 
such a case for walking exercise, however mode- 
rately indulged in, to be followed by inability to 
keep the thoughts to this point, or by distressing 
drowsiness or actual sleep ; the walking exer- 
cise, in short, having brought on head-symptoms 
which were not present previously. Upon this 
point I am thoroughly convinced. I am also 
constrained to believe — indeed the simple facts 
of experience leave me no alternative — that in 
very many cases the persistence in walking and 
standing, when the opposite rule of rest ought 
to have been observed, has had mainly to do, 
not only with bringing on and keeping up a state 
of cerebral exhaustion, but with pushing matters 
to the crisis of paralysis. I do not remember a 
single case of hemiplegia, in any form, in which 
the attack was not preceded by marked failure 
in locomotive power, and in which the history 
did not countenance the notion that the attack 
might have been averted if there had been more 



Rest from Head- Work. 71 

prudence in the matter of walking or standing. 
The simple occurrence of hemiplegia must show 
that the brain had become unequal to the full 
amount of locomotive work demanded of it ; and 
if so, then there must surely be grave danger 
that a jaded brain may break down in paralysis 
if it be overtaxed in the direction of this particu- 
lar work. In a word, I cannot help but look 
upon this and other forms of paralysis in which 
locomotion is compromised as in the main pre- 
ventable, when people in whom symptoms of 
cerebral exhaustion are beginning to declare 
themselves are more alive to the necessity of 
saving their strength in the direction of locomo- 
tion. At all events, upon one point I have no 
doubt, namely this : that in many cases of cere- 
bral exhaustion, both with a view to prevention 
and cure, it is necessary to check rather than to 
encourage walking exercise. 

REST FROM HEAD-WORK. 

" I am also disposed to think that rest from 
head-work may be too much insisted upon in 
cerebral exhaustion, and in other cases of the 
kind. Often and often I have met with patients 
with jaded brains who have certainly let their 



72 The Cure of Nervousness. 

minds lie fallow too long. More than one over- 
worked barrister, who could scarcely drag on 
until the long vacation, has complained to me 
that the vacation was too long, and that it would 
have been better for him if he had returned to 
his own work sooner, or if he had changed his 
work. Mere distraction, even travel, is not 
enough. Weeds will grow apace under such 
circumstances ; and soon, very soon, the difficulty 
is to get the mind under cultivation again. "What 
is wanted generally, even at the beginning, is, 
not that work should be given up altogether, 
even for a short time, but that it should be mod- 
erated in amount, or changed. It is given to 
few to imitate the example of a late Premier, 
who, when thoroughly over-wrought at the end 
of the session, recruited himself by spending a 
great part of his holidays in writing i Juventus 
Mundi'; but the fact is full of significance in 
the present place. Indeed, the longer I live the 
more am I convinced that it is a grave mistake 
to let the mind lie fallow, even for a short time ; 
not only in the particular cases under considera- 
tion, but in all cases where head symptoms have 
to be dealt with : in epilepsy, for example, no 
less than in cerebral exhaustion. In epilepsy, 



Rest from Head- Work. 73 

indeed, I have long maintained that it is the very 
gravest blunder in practice to suspend education 
— that the very basis of successful treatment is 
only to be laid in education. In the case of an 
epileptic child I should be altogether hopeless of 
arriving at a satisfactory result, except by build- 
ing the plan of treatment on this foundation; 
and the same feeling would influence me consid- 
erably, even in the case of an adult suffering 
from cerebral disorder, let this disorder be what 
it may, if in one way or another I could not 
keep his mind from preying upon itself, by pro- 
viding him with some proper occupation. Of 
course, this notion may be carried too far. Un- 
doubtedly harm, much harm, may be done by 
pressing the necessity for work too strongly ; 
but, practically, this danger will prove to be 
small in comparison with that of letting the 
mind lie fallow." 



CHAPTER X. 

Value of a Large Supply of Food in Nerv- 
ous Disorders. 

Therb is such a thing as eating too much, 
and there is also such a thing as eating too little. 
Gluttons do the former ; nervous persons some- 
times do the latter. We would not advise nerv- 
ous persons to eat more than they can digest, 
but we would advise them to cultivate the love 
for wholesome food, and try to eat all that can 
be digested. Dr. G. Fielding Blandford, F. E. 
C. P., takes a similar view as to the value of a 
large supply of food in nervous disorders, and 
says in one of his lectures, from which we quote 
quite fully : 

" Among the various therapeutical agents and 
innumerable drugs advocated and employed for 
the relief of nervous weakness, and the cure of 
the disorders which thence arise, it is possible 



Food in Nervous Disorders. 75 

that the unaided effects of food may not in all 
cases have met with the trial they deserve. Pa- 
tients thus afflicted are told to live well and 
adopt a generous diet, but the generosity of this 
is usually estimated by the amount of port wine, 
or other alcoholic stimulant, rather than by that 
of the bread, mutton, or beef. 

" Certain chronic invalids who have been 
brought under my notice have been lifted out of 
their former condition of ' nervousness ' by an 
increase in the quantity of their food. They 
have been people suffering from some general 
neurosis, taking the form of an insanity of a low 
and depressed character, or hypochondriasis, 
hysteria, alcoholism, or neuralgia — affections 
closely allied one to another, which may be wit- 
nessed in one form or other in individuals inher- 
iting the same neurotic temperament. We may 
see different members of the same family dis- 
playing, one insanity, another neuralgia, a third 
hypochondriasis, while the conversion of one va- 
riety into another is a matter of e very-day ob- 
servation. 

" If we inquire into the past history of nerv- 
ous patients, and have the opportunity of learning 
accurately the facts thereof, we often find that 



76 Food in JVervous Disorders. 

for a considerable time the supply of daily food 
has been in no degree adequate to the necessities 
of the individual. Here is a common case: A 
man somewhat past middle life, but whose years 
do not imply senile decay, becomes unfit for busi- 
ness, fidgety, irritable, depressed, or even mel- 
ancholic to the extent of insanity. We hear that 
he has been a hard-working man of business, 
always nervous, and very probably an indifferent 
sleeper. Being most heavy for sleep in the 
morning, he has risen at the latest moment, and, 
snatching a mouthful of breakfast, has hurried 
off to catch the train or omnibus, worried and 
anxious lest he fail to reach his office at the hour 
appointed. At lunch-time, if he be really hard- 
worked, he takes, not a meal, but a sandwich or 
biscuit, eaten perhaps standing, and often bolted 
in so great a hurry that digestion is difficult ; he 
tells us that he dare not take more of a meal in 
the middle of the day, for he would be rendered 
unfit for the remainder of his work. In the 
evening, with what appetite he may, he eats his 
dinner, perhaps not before half-past seven o'clock. 
Now, granting that his dinner is amply suffi- 
cient, such a man lives on one meal a day, with 
very little beside. These are the persons who 



Food in Nervous Disorders. 77 

cannot go on without frequent holidays ; nervous 
by inheritance, they break down because they 
are insufficiently fed. A holiday, during which 
they live better, builds them up again for a time, 
again to break down ; often to fall into the con- 
dition above-mentioned. Another class, among 
whom we may frequently witness the same re- 
sult and corresponding symptoms, are the clergy- 
men, who for various reasons deny themselves 
an adequate amount of food. Either they fast 
rigidly, according to the rule and doctrine of the 
day, often allowing some hours to elapse before 
they break their fast, or they think that hearty 
eating is a snare and a carnal enjoyment, or 
they hold it sinful to eat their fill while others 
are in want. Whatever the cause, certain it is 
that many of the clergy break down in one or 
other of the forms of nervous disorder already 
enumerated, and an enlarged dietary is to them 
a necessity. A vast number of women, for one 
reason or other, take a very small supply of 
food ; some think it unladylike to eat heartily ; 
some eat on the sly, and when this is not prac- 
ticable go without. Many, from the lives they 
lead, are doubtless correct in saying they cannot 
eat, because they have no appetite. These stay 



78 Food in JVervous Disorders. 

in the house from month to month, or never 
venture beyond the door except in a carriage, 
because ladies do not walk in the streets. Oth- 
ers have misgivings on the score of their diges- 
tion. Like many women who lead sedentary 
lives, and habituate themselves to passing long 
periods without action of the bowels, they suffer 
greatly from constipation, which is looked upon 
as an indication and a warning that they ought 
not to eat. So they starve themselves, and fancy 
that if they abstain from food it is of little conse- 
quence whether they pass a motion once a week 
or once a fortnight. 

" It may be well to consider somewhat more 
in detail the various neuroses which have been 
mentioned. 

" The first on the list is low nervous depres- 
sion, commonly known as melancholia, the most 
formidable of all that have been named, the one 
most likely to run in a short time to serious and 
even fatal insanity, but which, if arrested at an 
early stage, is often singularly amenable to treat- 
ment. In almost every example of this variety, 
and almost from the commencement, we find a 
marked disinclination to take food, and in ex- 
treme cases it can only be administered by some 



Food in Nervous Disorders. 79 

kind of forcible feeding. In milder cases, and 
at an early period, it will be taken if we insist 
upon it, and the result of a large supply is fre- 
quently manifested in a very brief time. It has 
been ascertained by many writers that refusal of 
food on the part of melancholia patients is due 
to dyspepsia, and in confirmation of this opinion 
they point to the foul and furred tongue, the ob- 
stinate constipation, and the fetor of breath so 
constantly observed in such patients ; but this 
condition of tongue and fetor are due, I am con- 
vinced, not to gastric disturbance, but to the 
generally depressed and devitalized state of the 
individual ; and the best proof of the absence of 
dyspepsia is that, although we suddenly compel 
the ingestion of what, compared with that previ- 
ously taken, may be called a large quantity 
of nourishment, the stomach by no means rejects 
it, but, on the contrary, retains and digests it, as 
is shown by the rapid amelioration which takes 
place. It is inconceivable that dyspepsia can be 
the cause of refusal of food when the administra- 
tion of it is unattended by sickness or inconven- 
ience, even when that which is taken into the 
stomach is not light invalid diet. From my own 
observation, and from the subsequent confession 



80 Food in Nervous Disorders. 

of patients, I am inclined to believe that the re- 
fusal of food is in almost every case the result of 
delusion, this being in turn the result or inter- 
pretation in consciousness of the extreme nervous 
depression and exhaustion under which they are 
laboring. They are too wicked to live, too 
wicked to eat ; it is sinful to pamper their flesh 
and their appetites ; they beg for cold water and 
dry bread, but the idea of a good dinner their 
soul abhors. If we see such sufferers at an early 
stage, when forcible feeding is not necessary, 
and they will take that which is ordered, merely 
protesting against the uselessness or wickedness 
of the proceeding, we may prescribe a large 
amount of food without fear ; nay, with a confi- 
dent expectation of the greatest benefit. 

" Now the latter, and it may be the friends, 
will protest loudly that it is impossible to take 
this quantity ; he will assign every conceivable 
reason for avoiding it ; but if we are firm and 
insist, and, if necessary, cause him to be fed with 
a spoon, he will retain and thrive on it, and in a 
few weeks, or even days, will show very marked 
signs of its good effect. Patients have recov- 
ered under this treatment in a singularly rapid 
manner. Some learn in a short time to appre- 



Food in Nervous Disorders. 81 

ciate the benefit of the food, and miss their meal 
if from any cause they are unable to take it at 
the appointed hour ; and some have gone on for 
years after their recovery, taking not the quan- 
tity prescribed during the acute stage of their 
illness, but one very much larger than that on 
which they had endeavored to live for so long, 
and under such a change of regimen have lost all 
trace of the depression and hypochondria from 
which they formerly suffered. Although beef- 
tea, chocolate, and milk have been mentioned as 
articles of diet, it by no means follows that 
liquids are to predominate ; on the contrary, 
solid food is far better as a sedative, and also 
far more nutritious, and it may be taken as in 
health. 

" It is rather, however, in chronic alcoholism 
that the good effects of food may be witnessed. 
Here it is of the greatest consequence to abolish 
alcoholic stimulants entirely ; in fact, in such 
abolition lies the only hope of effecting the 
reformation of the chronic drinker. The intense 
sinking and craving for the accustomed stimulus 
may often be effectually met by food. Such pa- 
tients are unquestionably most difficult to deal 
with ; they assign reasons of all kinds for reject- 



82 Food in Nervous Disorders. 

ing food, and for being treated by their favorite 
remedy. They are faint, they require support, 
they suffer from stomach ailment, from pain, 
from want of appetite, nausea, or sinking ; but 
they rarely vomit that which they take if drink 
is withheld, and this is a tolerably sure sign that 
the stomach is equal to the digestion of the food. 
The symptoms of alcoholism need not be here 
described ; but whether they be the transient 
and immediate results of a heavy debauch, or 
the graver signs of commencing degenerative 
change of the nerve-tissues, which runs on to 
alcoholic paralysis, epilepsy, or dementia, food 
is equally demanded, and is in fact the one thing 
which can arrest this degeneration, by supplying 
nutritive elements in large quantities. The re- 
covery in such cases is often astonishing. I 
lately saw a young man who for many weeks was 
completely paraplegic, but who nevertheless en- 
tirely regained the use of his limbs. The recov- 
eries, too, from alcoholic dementia are often 
equally surprising ; in fact, there seems scarcely 
any state from which recovery might not take 
place if the disease has not existed for a long 
period, and if we are able to withdraw all 
alcohol, and administer nourishment in quantity. 



Food in Nervous Disorders. 83 

" There are a number of people whose nerv- 
ous temperament displays itself in symptoms 
which are called, in common parlance, hysterical 
or hypochondriacal. While young they are 
termed hysterical, especially if they are women ; 
when older they are known as hypochondriacs, 
and their nervousness then takes for the most 
part the form of depression and anxiety, or even 
suffering, on account of some fancied bodily dis- 
order. 

" Few of these will be found to take an ade- 
quate supply of proper food, and those who take 
the least will present the most distressing symp- 
toms of their disorder. The hypochondriacal 
direct their attention to the digestive organs 
more frequently than to any other region. They 
suffer from constipation, flatulence, and a host of 
other evils, and for this reason either shun food, 
or eat most unwholesome and extraordinary 
combinations irregularly or at long intervals. 
Hysterical women — I am not now speaking of 
young girls — are especially prone to eat irregu- 
larly ; to take food, if possible, when unnoticed; 
to eat altogether a very inadequate quantity, and 
to eke it out by an inordinate proportion of 
stimulants. If we look at such, especially the 



84 Food in Nervous Disorders. 

hypochondriacal, their whole aspect betokens 
innutrition. Often they are miserably thin ; if 
they are given to drink they may be fat, but 
their flabby tissues speak of low organization 
and defective power. It is evident that the nerv- 
ous energy of such people is very low ; this is 
manifested by their mental depression and dis- 
turbance, and the defect must be supplied from 
some quarter or other. But whence can a sup- 
ply of force come except from the material of 
food taken into the system by the alimentary 
organs ? Moral measures are, it is said, and 
said truly, essential to the recovery of such per- 
sons. But moral measures constantly fail, be- 
cause the bodily health does not allow of mental 
improvement, and is not pari passu attended to. 
As in more marked mental aberration no amount 
of argument, proof, or moral suasion will expel a 
delusion which vanishes of itself when the bodily 
health is renovated ; so change of scene, of per- 
sons, and moral treatment of every kind, will 
fail with the hysterical or hypochondriacal 60 
long as they try to live upon physic or alcohol, 
or upon a diet almost devoid of nutritive ele- 
ments. 

"It may be objected that some hypochon- 



Food in Nervous Disorders. 85 

driacal patien eat, not scantily, but enormously, 
taking more than is necessary for a person in 
health. Such are to be found, but in my experi- 
ence they are the least to be pitied of their class. 
Though nervous about themselves, and prone to 
take notice of the slightest indication of any- 
thing they may think an ailment, they are not 
generally depressed or unhappy, but, after a 
fashion of their own, they exert themselves, and 
enjoy life. Such people, I believe, take this 
amount of food from a feeling that it is to them 
a necessity, and thus they keep at bay the graver 
nervous disorder which perpetually threatens 
them. Food is to them a stimulus, and were it 
withdrawn they would speedily show signs of 
more serious mental mischief. 

" The only other subject on which I propose 
to say something is neuralgia. It is obvious that 
any observations on it must be of the widest and 
most general character, and that no account can 
be taken of the special forms of this neurosis, or 
of any pathological changes connected with it. 
Believing with many others that neuralgia is one 
manifestation of impaired sensibility, as other 
neuroses may be displayed in mental symptoms, 
and in these alone, I think that the radical cure, 



86 Food in Nervous Disorders. 

and not the mere alleviation, is to be found in 
many cases in the supply of a large amount of 
nutriment to the nervous system. The confessed 
failure of drugs in the case of neuralgias, and 
the mere temporary alleviation by such methods 
as hypodermic injection, inhalation, or a dose of 
alcohol, point to the necessity of some more 
general mode of treatment, which shall effect a 
greater change in the functions of the nervous 
organs. Whatever the form of food specially 
indicated, it generally will be found that the en- 
tire amount requires to be increased, and that 
the quantity taken for a series of years has been 
deficient. It may be that the alimentary system 
of elderly persons will be found incapable of 
assimilating the requisite amount. On the in- 
tractable nature of the neuralgias of the aged, 
nothing need here be said. 

" With two remarks I will conclude. Fir3t, 
in all chronic forms of neurosis, alcoholic stimu- 
lants are a hindrance rather than a help — are 
productive of evil rather than of good. Secondly, 
in such disorders the fear, so commonly enter- 
tained, both by doctors and patients, of ' over- 
loading the stomach,' producing 'biliousness,' and 
the like, is in the majority of cases not realized. 



Food in Nervous Disorders. 87 

Great opposition will be offered by patients, and 
every kind of evasion attempted. They will 
swallow bottles of medicine far more willingly 
than they will eat sufficient meals at regular in- 
tervals. To induce them to do this is often a 
difficult task, and here moral handling is re- 
quired. If this be judiciously applied to the 
patient and the patient's friends, some yery re- 
markable results mav be attained." 



CHAPTER XL 

Important Questions Answered. 

In che previous chapter great stress is laid 
on the importance of abundant food in the cure 
of nervousness. Does this advice apply to all 
cases ? 

Answer. By no means. A great deal of 
nervousness originates in the monotony of life. 
The clerk who is confined for months in his 
office becomes nervous for want of a change of 
scene, and an increase of his food alone would 
do him no good. He needs a " change of air," 
a change of society, a change of surroundings. 
He needs something; new to look at. The si^ht 
of green fields, mountains, forests, natural ob- 
jects, broad expanses of water, and fresh air and 
sunshine, with the exercise which accompanies 
them, are his first requisite. Give him these, 



Important Questions Answered. 89 

and his appetite will improve, he will eat and 
digest more, and out of his food and the air he 
breathes his nervous system will be built up 
anew. 

But the office clerk is not the only man who 
becomes nervous from want of change of scene. 
Half the nervous disorders of women are due to 
the monotony of their lives. In cases of disor- 
dered nerves arising from grief or a severe men- 
tal shock, the diet-cure would be of but slight 
avail ; and in the 6addest of all forms of nervous 
disorders — religious despondency — it would be 
useless. Grief, anxiety and religious despond- 
ency are best treated by change of scene, and 
by a total separation of the patient from all for- 
mer surroundings. Grief and anxiety wear them- 
selves out in course of time, and as they lessen 
so does the nervous condition improve. Relig- 
ious despondency, on the other hand, is far less 
hopeful. One thing, however, must be remarked 
— that the persons most subject to religious de- 
spondency are idle, with little or no occupation 
for mind or body. For such, good steady work 
would be of great service. Nervous disorders 
are of so many kinds, spring from so many 
causes, and possess such an infinity of complica- 



90 Important Questions Answered. 

tions, that to lay down a uniform system of cure 
would be out of the question ; but, in any case, 
change of scene and surroundings and chancre of 
occupation are far more valuable aids than medi- 
cine. 

There is much nervousness among farmers' 
wives. Sometimes it is caused by the very bad 
food which they prepare — the fried pork, ham 
and eggs, hot bread. These things do not nour- 
ish the body well ; but the monotony of a farm- 
er's wife's life is too great, and the labor, in 
addition to child-bearing and rearing, too much, 
and they should frequently have a change of 
scene and surroundings. City women are cured 
of their nervousness by going to the country. 
Country women might be cured by going to the 
city and spending a few days or weeks there. 
Not all, however, can do this. Then let them 
get out into the woods and fields, and make the 
acquaintance of the birds, flowers and trees, or 
let them ride or drive, or take a sail, or ride on 
the railroad. A change, if but for a day, fre- 
quently made, will help to prevent an increase 
of nervousness, and aid in making life much 
more endurable — make it, indeed, what it ought 
to be, a little heaven here below. 



Quantity of Food for Brain-Workers. 91 

GRIEF AND SORROW. 

Why is it that grief, sorrow and despair are 
80 exhausting to the nervous system ? 

Ans. Because they are forms of nervous ex- 
ertion which consume large quantities of nervous 
substance, and at the same time they destroy 
the appetite and digestion, retard the circulation 
of the blood, and prevent that sound sleep which 
restores nerve substance. The mind in such 
cases cannot act easily. It is like drawing a 
sled on dry ground. The true remedy is to take 
the mind off of these subjects, which exhaust, 
and place it on something agreeable. 

QUANTITY OF FOOD FOR BRAIN-WORKERS. 

Do brain-workers require as much food as 
those who work only with their muscles ? 

Ans. What is a brain- worker ? A man who 
writes books, edits newspapers, practices law, 
plans and executes a campaign, contrives how to 
build a house, a steamboat or a railroad, invents 
a new machine— in fact, works at " head-work " 
— is a brain-worker. A farmer and mechanic 
may be a brain-worker, quite as well as a lawyer 
and preacher. Now, it is estimated by Dr. Car- 
penter that, while the brain is not over one- 



92 Important Questions Answered. 

fortieth the weight of the body, it receives one- 
fifth of all the blood ; and to make this blood, a 
great deal of food is required. According to 
some physiologists, three hours of hard study 
wear out the body more than a whole day of 
hard work at the anvil or on the farm. Still, a 
brain-worker rarely eats as much as a muscle- 
worker, unless, at the same time, the former, as he 
ought to, takes also considerable out-of-door ex- 
ercise. Nor can brain-workers manage so indi- 
gestible food as those who work at manual labor. 
In our country, however, nearly all are to some 
extent brain-workers, and all ought also to work 
with the body sufficiently to maintain a high 
degree of health, upon which, after all, the vigor 
of the nervous system depends. 

NERVOUS EXHAUSTION THROUGH INDOLENCE. 

Why is it that indolent people are sometimes 
as nervous as the overworked ? 

A ns. The indolent man does not exercise 
his brain sufficiently to keep it in a high degree 
of vigor. Indolence exhausts, by allowing the 
entrance of fretful thoughts into the mind ; not 
action, in which there is health and pleasure. 
We never knew a man without an occupation who 



A Hint for Those Who Need It. 93 

did not seem to be very busy. It may be lie 
was occupied in worrying about his dinner, or 
the place where he should spend his holiday — 
which he did not work for; in abusing his wife 
and children ; in inventing pleasures, and abus- 
ing them w r hen found ; in turning the house 
upside down by doing little jobs foolishly sup- 
posed to be useful. And women, too, when 
stretched on the rack of a too easy chair, are 
they not forced to confess that there is as much 
nervous force required to enable them to endure 
the "pains and penalties of idleness" as would, 
if rightly directed, render them useful and hap- 
py ? The fact is, there are far more who die of 
selfishness and idleness than of overwork ; for 
where men break down by overwork it is gener- 
ally from not taking care to order aright their 
lives and obey the laws of health. 

A HINT FOR THOSE WHO NEED IT. 

May not fretting over past errors cause nerv- 
ous exhaustion? 

Arts. Most certainly; and no waste of force 
is so foolish as this, because if our mistakes are 
curable, the same energy we expend in regret- 
ting would counteract their bad effects ; and if 



94 Important Questions Answered. 

they are incurable, why think any more about 
them ? None but a child cries over spilt milk. 
The mischief is done, and let it be forgotten, 
only taking care for the future. Sometimes peo- 
ple keep fretting about troubles that may never 
take place, and spend floods of nervous force 
on absolutely nothing. Real worry from great 
trials of various sorts is quite enough, and 
causes a greater draught on our vital force than 
hard work. Let us not, therefore, aggravate 
matters by anticipations of troubles that are 
little better than visionary. 

NERVOUS TEMPERAMENTS. 

Have you any hint for the person with an 
excessive development of the nervous tempera- 
ment ? 

Ans. Yes; several of them. Persons of a 
nervous temperament seem to be always upon 
wires. Nature has given them energy; but 
their physique is in many cases inadequate to 
supply the demands made upon it. The steam 
is there, but the boiler is too w T eak. Duke 
d'Alva, according to Fuller, must have been of 
this nature. " He was one of a lean body and 
visage, as if his eager soul, biting for anger at 



Ifervous Temperaments. 95 

tho clog of his body, desired to fret a passage 
through it." The same thought was wittily ex- 
pressed by Sydney Smith when he exclaimed : 
" Why, look there at Jeffrey ; and there is my 

little friend , who has not body enough to 

cover his mind decently with; his intellect is 
improperly exposed." Now, these are just the 
sort of people who should not kill themselves, 
for, though wrapped in small parcels, they are 
fine goods. They owe it as a duty to them- 
selves and others not to allow their fiery souls 
to "fret their bodies to decay" — not to throw 
too much zeal into trifles, in order that they may 
have a supply of nerve force for things impor- 
tant. The person with this temperament who 
desires to wear well must take for his motto, 
" Nothing in excess." Such a one, as we have 
had occasion more than once to urge, avoids 
dinners of many courses, goes to bed early, and 
does not devote his energy to the endurance of 
overheated assemblies. When young men around 
him have athletics on the brain, he keeps his 
head and health by exercising only moderately. 
He is not ambitious of being in another's place, 
but tries quietly to adorn his own. " Give me 
innocence ; make others great !" is his motto. 



96 Important Questions Answered. 

When others are killing themselves to get money, 
and to get it quickly, that with it they may make 
a vain show, he prays the prayer of Agar, " Give 
me neither poverty nor riches, 5 ' for he thinks 
more of the substance than of the shadow. 

BRAIN FOOD. 

What is brain food ? 

Ans. All food that nourishes the body and 
makes good blood is brain food. The same 
blood that nourishes the foot and hand also 
nourishes the brain and nerves, though the latter 
no doubt take from it and require in it sub- 
stances which the former do not. In general, 
the fruits and grains contain those substances 
which the brain requires, but our present mode 
of cookery is such that much of our food is 
robbed of its most nutritious properties, or ren- 
dered indigestible before it reaches the stomach. 
Brown bread, made from the very best of wheat, 
or, if the entire bran is too irritating, bread 
made of wheat from which the external cuticle 
has been removed, but not with it the second 
layer, is very desirable for brain-workers. Bak- 
ers' brown bread, made of poor white flour and 
the worst of bad bran, however, is not fit to be 



Brain Food. 97 

eaten. If made in the form of gems it is best, 
provided these are light. Several English lite- 
rary men advise oatmeal as an excellent food to 
do brain-work on, and they are right; used once 
a day with fruit, it serves an excellent purpose. 
Indian corn -bread is also nearly as good. 
Lean meat is not a brain, but a muscle, food, 
and is not so important for brain-workers. Oys- 
ters are a valuable brain-food, if eaten raw after 
the day's work is done. Fruits, especially apples 
and grapes, have two values : they thin the 
blood, so that it may circulate easily in the finest 
vessels ; and they furnish acids, so necessary with 
the alkalies of grains, in generating the nervous 
currents. They also furnish phosphorus and 
sugar, both essential to brain action. Some 
form of fat is essential to nourish the brain. 
This organ is rich in fats. It may be obtained 
from oatmeal, corn, starchy-foods, cream, butter, 
milk, eggs, or nuts. If, however, the system is 
overloaded witli these, a great deal of out-door 
physical labor is required in order to supply 
oxygen, so that the carbon and hydrogen of 
the fat may be oxydized and made available. 
The chemist has taken the hint, and offers to 
furnish us with brain-foods, condensed and bot- 



98 Important Questions Answered. 

tied, ready for use, and there are now some fifty 
preparations made to feed starving brains. They 
have only temporary value, and must not be re- 
lied on permanently. Only a false civilization 
makes them at all in demand. Tea, coffee, wine 
and tobacco are called brain- foods by many. 
They act only by their stimulating properties, 
and do not feed the brain. If relied on to any 
great extent they exhaust the brain, sometimes 
beyond recovery. 

There is a class of brain-workers employed 
on our great morning daily papers who are 
obliged to work very rapidly and all night. It 
is an exceedingly unnatural employment, and 
very exhausting to the nervous system. Some 
of these keep up their strength by stimulants, 
some by oatmeal, and some by beefsteak. The 
first is fatal to long usefulness. Each man must 
seek out for himself those normal means best 
suited to his case. For a further discussion of 
the subject of Food, see our work, " Eating for 
Strength," fifth edition. 

SLEEP. 

What relation has sleep to health of brain ? 
Ans. Sleep has at least three uses : It is 



Imperfect Sleep. 99 

required to store up oxygen for use during the 
day ; to give nature an opportunity to remove 
some of the debris from broken-down tissue; and, 
not least important, to rebuild the used-up tissues. 

IMPERFECT SLEEP. 

Why do we sometimes wake, after a long 
sleep, only half rested, and with a very irritable 
nervous system ? 

Arts. It may be because the air of the room 
is bad, too little oxygen is taken up, and too 
much carbonic acid breathed ; it may be because 
the blood is not rich enough in substances which 
are needed to repair the worn-out tissue. In 
such case the remedy is apparent. 

RAPID MOVEMENTS. 

Are rapid movements and fast thinking more 
exhausting to the brain than slow ones ? 

Ans. Yes. If you double the speed of any 
work, you require quadruple force to keep it up. 
Nervous persons should train themselves to work 
slowly. 

COLD BATHING. 

Is cold bathing good for nervous people ? 
Arts. Sometimes a weak, cold-blooded person 



100 Important Questions Answered. 

is made nervous by long-continued cold baths. 
They abstract more heat than he can spare. To 
such, tepid or warm baths are preferable. 

SLEEPLESSNESS. 

Why is it 60 hard for nervous persons to get 
to sleep after any excitement ? 

Ans. Because the vaso-motor nerves cannot 
quickly contract the cerebral arteries and empty 
them of blood. All such should spend their 
evenings quietly, and take a hot foot-bath, or 
sitting-bath, before retiring. A little nourishing 
food before going to bed is also often useful. It 
attracts to the stomach that blood which swells 
the cerebral arteries. If one cannot go to sleep 
then, it is sometimes a good thing to take a 
mouthful of hard, dry, raw wheat into the mouth 
and give yourself up to chewing it fine. This 
will take the attention from thought, and 
often bring sleep. Another good method is to 
have some one give gentle percussion with the 
hands over the small of the back and hips. If 
rightly done, this is very soothing and useful. 

FAST EATING. 

Why do nervous persons find it so hard to 
eat slowly ? 



Mental Overstrain of Merchants. 101 

Ans. Because they are nervous. The rem- 
edy is in a resolute determination to correct 
the habit. 

NERVOUSNESS OF MERCHANTS. 

What bankrupts the nervous system of our 
merchants more than anything else ? 

Ans. A restless ambition to become rich 
leads men to enlarge their business to unsound 
and unsafe proportions, and to embark in en- 
terprises and speculations outside of their legiti- 
mate sphere, which, almost without exception, 
prove disastrous. These cause that anxiety of 
mind and loss of sleep which break down the 
nervous system prematurely. 

MENTAL OVERSTRAIN OF MERCHANTS. 

How is the merchant to avoid that mental 
overstrain which comes from great competi- 
tion in business ? 

Ans. By organizing his business on a basis 
that will enable him to stand all honest competi- 
tion without serious injury. A merchant who 
thoroughly understands his business, having the 
means and brains to organize it properly and the 
ability to manage it successfully, need have no 
fear of competition. The anxiety of business 



102 Important Questions Answered. 

men is caused not 60 much by competition as by 
errors of judgment in making purchases and ex- 
tending credits, or in bad management. Mer- 
chants who manage with economy, buying wisely 
and employing the best means for selling their 
goods, need have no anxiety as to the result. A 
wealthy merchant is reported to have answered 
the question, "How did you make your fortune ?" 
by saying, "Buying low and selling high." It 
does not follow, however, that a merchant must 
sell his goods at a large profit to succeed in busi- 
ness. But as a general rule it may be truly said 
that selling goods without a profit is a sure indi- 
cation of coming bankruptcy. It was discovered 
in the trade in 1876-7 that one of the oldest and 
most respectable houses in this city was selling 
many goods at their actual cost, and nearly 
everything in their line at a margin that would 
hardly pay the cost of selling ; and although this 
house held a position among the first, and bore a 
good reputation of many years' standing, yet 
it proved no exception to the rule mentioned, for 
it soon failed and compromised at thirty cents 
on a dollar. 

MENTAL HYGIENE FOR THE AGED. 

How are old people to keep the mind from 



Amusements. 103 

failing, and even becoming obliterated, before 
the body is worn out ? 

Arts. Only by cultivating it. As people 
gro*7 old they should work less, and read, study 
and think more. The reason why so many aged 
people have a blank where there should be a 
mind is generally because the latter is not kept 
alive and active by culture. The rust gets so 
thick that thoughts cannot be formed. 

AMUSEMENTS. 

What is the effect of recreation and amuse- 
ment on the health of the mind ? 

Arts. It is of the highest importance that 
invalids, students, brain-workers, old and young, 
in all positions of life, have some recreation, some 
wholesome amusement. How it is to be pro- 
vided, each person must decide for himself. 
Some will choose one method, some another. 
As a rule, for sedentary persons, out-of-door 
amusements, when the weather permits, are 
preferable, because they bring the body into the 
air and sunlight. 

Hunting and fishing will do well for cer- 
tain seasons of the year, and for those who like 
these sports, but they are not well adapted to 



104: Important Questions Answered. 

women and children. Zoology, field botany, 
mineralogy, entomology, geology, natural his- 
tory, etc., are agreeable forms of amusement 
for a large class of both sexes ; garden work for 
another class. Mechanical work is a form of 
recreation well adapted to those who have me- 
chanical genius. Horseback-riding and rowing 
are among the very best of means for resting the 
mind and strengthening the body. Out-of-door 
sports of all kinds have their place and use. For 
indoor recreation, vocal and instrumental music 
stand highest, and every person ought to learn 
to sing and play on some instrument, so that 
he may have that pleasure which grows out of 
musical culture. Yocal music has special value 
for expanding the chest, and filling the lungs 
with air, and for quickening the circulation 
and digestion, and calling the mind away from 
care, trouble and despondent moods, which 
more or less annoy the lives of the best of 
people. Music has another advantage: it is 
adapted to so many persons, of both sexes; 
and those who cannot take a part in making 
it can derive pleasure from listening to it. 
Heading aloud, and especially declaiming, is, 



Amusements in Germany. 105 

like music, exceedingly valuable to those who 
have weak lungs. 

Playing with children is a form of recrea- 
tion of very high value to those who really love 
these pure, beautiful creatures, but one must get 
on their level to be able to give them as much 
pleasure as he receives. The reading of humor- 
ous books and funny stories and anecdotes may 
be classed as a species of recreation which should 
not be forgotten. Story-telling, and anything 
that causes healthful laughter, should be cultiva- 
ted as a means of mental hygiene. No form of 
amusement should be carried to excess, for this 
defeats the end for which it is designed, and de- 
bilitates the nervous system instead of strength- 
ening it. Especially should nervously-exhausted 
people choose their amusement wisely and well, 
so they may receive good rather than evil. 

AMUSEMENTS IN GERMANY. 

What is the influence of popular amuse- 
ments upon the health and character of the 
Germans ? 

Ans. The influence is certainly good here, 
as everywhere, so far as amusements are con- 
ducted in accordance with the laws of health; 



106 Important Questions Answered. 

but to answer the question fully one must have 
an insight into the German character. There is 
a marked difference between the manner in 
which amusements are regarded and provided 
for in Germany and in America. We are in- 
clined to ignore amusements or to regard them 
merely as something to be tolerated but not ex- 
pressly provided for. This at least was the view 
of the Puritan Fathers, and the gradual introduc- 
tion of popular and social amusements in New 
England as elsewhere among us has been re- 
garded with jealousy by all those retaining the 
original feeling concerning them. 

In Germany, however, amusements such as 
dancing, card-playing and theater-going have 
never been forbidden by the Church or by pub- 
lic sentiment in any form, and it has always 
been the especial care of kings and others in 
authority to provide as regularly for the amuse- 
ment of the populace as for any other recognized 
public necessity. A German prince, to make 
himself and his family popular, will build an ele- 
gant theater, and often, as in Hanover, require 
all military officers to attend, deducting the 
small admission fee from their pay. The theater 
is thus made a brilliant and popular resort, and 



Amusements in Germany. 107 

brought under the influence of the clergy and 
of the refined and moral classes who attend it. 

In the public schools of Germany the same 
general theory of amusements is apparent. 
Physical and mental relaxation are systematic- 
ally provided for, and the teachers enter into 
and share them heartily with their pupils. 
Every teacher can sing, and most can play upon 
some musical instrument. When the children 
become restless, the teacher, instead of scolding 
them, will often take his violin and lead them in 
a lively song, combined, perhaps, with marching 
or other physical exercises. The military taste 
of the Germans enters largely into all these 
amusements. At recess, in many schools, the 
teacher goes with the boys to the playground 
and conducts a military drill. At other times 
a teacher may be seen marching through the 
streets at the head of his pupils on the way to 
the public-school gymnasium, where the exer- 
cises of swinging, leaping, marching, etc., are 
conducted with military precision and with a 
spirit and energy scarcely to be found else- 
where. 

In all this, as throughout the entire system 
of German amusements, it is important to ob- 



108 Important Questions Answered. 

serve that with the amusement there is usually 
associated some form of instruction. The Ger- 
man mind easily submits to having its sports 
thus regulated and controlled for a useful pur- 
pose, and hence it would be easier in Germany 
than in almost any other country to establish a 
system of combined physical and mental hygiene 
alike for children and adults ; and this is being 
done through such agencies as the Kindergar- 
ten and the now popular Yolkserziehungs Ge- 
selschaften (Societies for Popular Instruction). 
Such being the character of German amuse- 
ments, we may well say that they have a most 
beneficial influence upon the health of the peo- 
ple. Only where they go beyond reasonable 
limits, and are associated with beer drinking or 
other excesses, can they be regarded as in any 
manner prejudicial either to health or good 
morals. An American in Germany will indeed 
find occasion for unfavorable criticism, but if he 
be devoid of narrow prejudices he cannot fail 
to find much worthy of imitation, and this 
especially in the matter of popular amusements ; 
for we may wisely accept all that is good in this 
sturdy and heroic race, while avoiding whatever 
may be found objectionable. 



Nervousness in Women. 109 

UNSUSPECTED CAUSES OF SOME OF THE NERVOUSNESS 

IN WOMEN. 

What are some of the unsuspected causes 
of nervousness in women ? 

Ans. Dr. Abby Cutter, of Louisville, Ky., a 
thoughtful and earnest physician, enumerates a 
few of these in a letter too long for insertion 
here; but the following synopsis gives its 
chief points : 

1. Self-abuse and secret vice on the part of 
girls — a habit dangerous and exhausting, and 
leading to a complete ruin of the nervous 
system. 

2. The employment of male physicians by 
sensitive and timid women at childbirth and in 
the treatment of diseases peculiar to their sex, is 
sometimes a cause of nervous disease. 

3. The excitements incident to the wedding- 
day and the long wedding-journeys connected 
with it, have made many nervous invalids. The 
practice of making wedding-journeys, she thinks, 
should be given up entirely. Cases in her own 
experience as a physician, where delicate women 
have suffered from invalidism all their lives from 
this cause alone, have proved to her satisfaction 



110 Important Questions Answered. 

that this is a more frequent cause of nervous 
diseases than is generally known. 

4. Another cause is lack of harmony and 
adaptation between husband and wife, each 
making the other nervous and unhappy when 
they should do the reverse. 

5. Excessive childbearing is still another 
cause, especially when coupled with other cares 
that break down the general health. 

6. Errors of dress are causes of nervousness 
in women in very many ways. If they would 
dress for comfort and health, many nervous 
troubles would flee away as the morning dew 
before a bright sun. 

7. Lack of mental exercise is also a serious 
cause of nervousness, to be remedied only by 
proper mental culture. 

NERVOUS CHILDREN. 

What is the cause of so much nervousness in 
children ? 

Ans. The causes are too many to enumerate 
in this connection, but the following may be 
mentioned as the chief: 

1. Nervousness inherited from nervous, dys- 
peptic, scrofulous and debilitated parents. Only 



Climate and Nervousness. Ill 

the wisest course of care and education will 
cure them. 

2. Nervousness from the presence in the in- 
testinal canal of crude, half-digested food, or 
from worms. In very young children this is 
common. The food in such cases should be 
bland and nutritious. Bread and milk and 
fruits are best for them. 

3. Scrofula is a cause of nervousness in 
young children and in those who have a scrofu- 
lous constitution ; the physical culture should be 
attended to with the greatest care, and a chance 
given for them to outgrow it. The art of phys- 
ical education is almost unknown in America, 
and this is a grave misfortune. Our schools often 
make children nervous and scrofulous, when 
they should cure both conditions. Parents, 
teachers and physicians are to blame for this. 
The only remedy is a wise hygiene applied to 
the education of the young from the time of 
conception till they are old enough to become 
their own masters. 

CLIMATE AND NERVOUSNESS. 

Has climate any influence in causing or 
curing nervousness ? 



112 Important Questions Answered. 

Ans. What is called a stimulating climate 
is apt to aggravate nervousness. We have an 
English friend who spends much time in Amer- 
ica, and his great complaint is that our climate 
makes him so nervous that he can hardly con- 
trol himself. He has to take frequent trips to 
some region where the air is moist, so his 
nerves may become quiet. The climate of Col- 
orado, which is clear and bracing, aggravates 
nervousness. Oregon, on the contrary, has a 
moister air and less sunshine, and here a friend, 
who suffered from an overtaxed brain while 
living in California, found the climate favor- 
able to sleep, and his nervousness was very 
much diminished. Nervous, restless, overworked 
people often find the climate of Florida quiet- 
ing to their overtaxed nerves. 

NERVOUS EXHAUSTION OF TEACHERS. 

"What are the causes of the nervous exhaus- 
tion so common among teachers ? 

Ans. This exhaustion is peculiar to Ameri- 
can teachers, and seems to be the natural result 
of the general nervousness of the American 
people. Not only are our teachers peculiarly 
liable to nervous irritability, but the same men- 



Nervous Exhaustion of Teachers. 113 

tal constitution in the children causes them to 
be far more restless, and hence disorderly, in 
school than are children in most European 
countries. Teaching is in itself not exhausting. 
To those having a natural aptitude for it, it 
is a most delightful and healthful occupation. 
American teachers are worn out not by teach- 
ing, but by governing, their pupils. 

In Germany teaching is not regarded as 
wearing upon the nervous system. In visiting 
schools there we frequently found those who had 
taught without interruption from early manhood 
to the age of forty-five or fifty, with no apparent 
injury to health and not the slightest indication 
of nervous exhaustion. We well remember a 
hale and vigorous old gentleman of sixty in one 
of the public schools of Berlin who had taught 
in the same capacity for thirty-five years. His 
pupils were boys from twelve to sixteen years 
of age ; and the reason he had not been worn 
out was, not only that he was less nervous than 
most American teachers, but, still more impor- 
tant for him, that his pupils were not nervous 
or irritable. We asked another such teacher, one 
whose service in a boys 5 primary school had 
extended from the age of twenty to about forty 



114 Important Questions Ansioered. 

years, how he managed to govern his pupils so 
easily ; to which he replied, as though it were 
the simplest thing in the world, " When the 
children come to school for the first time, we 
tell them the rules, and they always obey them." 
Now, we would not say that those children were 
better than American children, but rather that 
they were less nervous, and hence the tempta- 
tion to disorder is with them far less. The 
German teacher has another advantage in the 
fact that he continues for a long time in the 
same grade of schools, and thus becomes so 
familiar with his particular routine of duties 
that he requires to spend no time out of school 
in exhausting study, but devotes his evenings to 
social recreation, or to such mental culture as 
is most agreeable. He is not continually strug- 
gling for a higher position in the school or for 
some other profession. He teaches quietly, 
and, as it would seem to us, monotonously, year 
after year, until retired, at last, upon a life 
pension. 

But while there is much less of nervousness 
in a German than in an American school, there 
is no lack of strength or industry. Everything 
moves on with military precision, and with a 



A Word from Brown- Sequard. 115 

sort of rugged energy that carries all before it, 
and that crushes opposition, but does not scold 
or fret at it. In America there are a larger 
proportion of female teachers than in any other 
country, and, as women are more sensitive and 
more easily annoyed than men, the position of a 
teacher in America is to them peculiarly trying. 
The advice of Dr. Clarke, of Boston, regarding 
the care of woman's health, is, of all places in 
the world, most applicable to American female 
teachers. 

The remedy for restlessness on the part of 
scholars and nervous exhaustion on the part of 
teachers is to be sought in that general building 
up of the system and broadening of the charac- 
ter which is to result from a wise system of 
physical culture. The constitutional nervousness 
and consequent premature exhaustion of Amer- 
icans as a race has been at its worst, and we are 
now progressing toward a healthier and stronger 
life. 

A WORD FROM BROWtf-SEQTTARD. 

What are the best rules for regulating the 
health of the brain ? 

Arts. Brown-Sequard says that "nerve force 
is produced through blood. It is a chemical 



116 Important Questions Answered. 

force which is transformed there into nerve force. 
This nerve force accumulates in the various or- 
gans of the nervous system in which it is formed 
during rest. But if rest be prolonged, then it 
ceases to be produced. Alteration cakes place 
in the part which is not put to work. On the 
other hand, action, which is so essential to the 
production of nerve force, if prolonged, will ex- 
haust force also, but produce a state distinct from 
that of rest. Over-rest will produce a lack of 
blood, while over-action may produce congestion. 
The great thing, therefore, is to have sufficient 
but not excessive action. 

There is another law, which is, that we should 
not exercise alone one, two, or three of the great 
parts of the nervous system ; since thus we draw 
blood to those parts only, and the other parts of 
the body suffer. In the due exercise of all our 
organs are to be found the principal rules of 
hygiene. 

To conclude with these great rules of hygiene, 
I should say that we should not spend more 
nervous force than our means allow us. Many 
commit this fault. We should make an equal 
use of all our organs, and of the various parts 
of the nervous system. Those who employ 



A Word from Brown- Sequard. 117 

the brain suffer a great deal from inattention to 
this law. 

Lastly, there should be regularity as regards 
the time of meals, the time and amount of action, 
the time and amount of sleep — regularity in 
everything. It is very difficult indeed to ob- 
tain it. But there is in our nature more power 
than we know, and if we conform ourselves to 
the law of habit things will soon go on without 
our meddling with them, and we come to be 
perfectly regular, although we perhaps had 
naturally a tendency quite the reverse. 



CHAPTEE XII. 

What our Thinkers and Scientists Say. 

expectant attention. 

The influence of expectant attention in mod- 
ifying nutrition and secretion is no less remark- 
able than we have seen it to be in producing 
muscular movements. The direction of the at- 
tention to a part is sufficient to call forth sens- 
ations in it; and if this be kept up, it may 
produce a change of functional action and 
the nutrition of the part. There can be no 
doubt but real disease may be caused by the 
indulgence of the hypochondriacal tendency to 
dwell upon uneasy sensations. This persist- 
ent direction of the attention has a much 
stronger effect when there is an expectation 
of a particular result. Thus it happens that 
the spells of pretenders to occult powers, in 



Expectant Attention. 119 

all ages and nations, often produce the pre- 
dicted maladies in those subjects who are 
credulous enough to believe in them. This 
was formerly the case among the negroes of 
the West Indies, who practiced on one an- 
other a species of African witchcraft, called 
obeah. Whenever a victim became fixed 
in the belief that an obi had been put 
upon him by some old man or woman who 
possessed the power, there was a slow pining 
away, death being a not uncommon result. 
So great was the dread of these spells that 
the mere threat of one party to a quarrel to 
put obi on the other was often sufficient 
to terrify the latter into submission. Even 
among the better instructed, a fixed belief 
that a mental disease had seized upon the 
person, or that a particular course of treat- 
ment would prove successful, has been the 
occasion of a fatal result. 

On the other hand, the same mental state 
may operate beneficially in checking the 
morbid action and restoring a healthy state. 
The confident expectation of a cure is the 
most potent means of bringing it about, 
doing what no medical treatment can ac- 



120 What Thinkers and Scientists Say. 

complish) as may be affirmed by an expe- 
rience extending through ages. — William B. 
Carpenter, M.D., F.R.S. 

NORMALLY DEVELOPED BRAINS. 

Unless men and woman both have nor- 
mally developed brains, the nation will go 
down. As good a brain is needed to gov- 
ern a household as to command a ship ; to 
guide a family aright as to guide a con- 
gress aright ; to do the least and the great- 
est of woman's work as to do the least and 
greatest of man's work. Moreover, in both 
sexes, the brain is the conservator of strength 
and prolonger of life. It is not only the 
organ of intellection, volition, and spiritual 
power, but the force evolved from it, more 
than the force evolved from any other organ, 
enables men and women to bear the burdens, 
and perform the duties, of life ; and with its 
aid, better than with any surger} 7 , can they 
overcome the "ills that flesh is heir to." — 
Edward H. Clarke, M.D. 

ALCOHOL ENFEEBLES THE REASON. 

If, then, alcohol enfeebles the reason, what 
part of the mental constitution does it ex- 



Women and Brain Labor. 121 

alt and excite ? It exalts and excites those 
animal, organic, emotional centers of mind 
which, in the dual nature of man, so often cross 
and oppose that pure and abstract reasoning 
nature which lifts man above the lower animals, 
and, rightly exercised, places him little lower 
than the angels. Exciting these animal centers, 
it lets loose all the passions, and gives them 
more or less of unlicensed domination over the 
whole man. It excites anger, and when it does 
not lead to this extreme it keeps the mind fret- 
ful, irritable, dissatisfied, captious. The flushed 
face of the red-hot angry man, how like it 
is to the flushed face of the man in the first 
stage of alcoholic intoxication. The face, white 
with rage, and the tremulous, agitated mus- 
cles of the body, how like both are to the 
pale face and helpless muscles of the man 
deep in intoxication from alcohol. The states 
are not simply similar, they are identical, and 
the one will feed the other. — Benj. W. Rich- 
ardson, M.D., F.R.S. 

WOMEN and brain labor. 
We have heard a great deal of late of 
the danger to women's health of over-mental 
strain of intellectual labor. I do not say 



122 What Thinkers and Scientists Say. 

there is never danger in this direction, that 
girls never study too much or too early, or 
that the daughters of women who have never 
used their brains may not have inherited 
rather soft and tender organs of cogitation to 
start with. I am no enthusiast for excessive 
book learning for either women or men, 
though in books read and books written I 
have found some of the chief pleasures of a 
happy life. But of one thing I am sure, and 
that is, that for one woman whose health is 
injured by excessive study (that is, by study 
itself, not the baneful anxiety of examination 
superadded to study), there are hundreds 
whose health is deteriorated by want of 
wholesome mental exercise. Sometimes the 
vacuity in the brains of girls simply leaves 
them dull and spiritless. More often in those 
swept and empty chambers of their skulls 
enter many small imps of evil omen. 

Let women have larger interests and no- 
bler pursuits, and their affections will become, 
not less strong and deep, but less sickly, less 
craving for demonstrative tenderness in return, 
less variable in their manifestations. Let 
women have sounder mental culture, and 



Maris and Woman's Brain. 123 

their emotions — so long exclusively fostered — 
will return to the calmness of health, and 
we shall hear no more of the intermittent 
feverish spirits, the causeless depressions, and 
all the long train of symptoms which belong 
to the Protean-formed hysteria, and open the 
way to madness on one side and to sin on 
the other. — Frances Power Cobbe. 

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MAn's AND WOMAN'S BRAIN. 

There is a natural difference between the 
two sexes ; not in the number, but in the 
degrees, of the primitive powers of the mind. 
Some are stronger in women, others stronger 
in men, and both sexes seem to be destined 
to different occupations in society. Indeed 
no education will change the nature of the 
innate dispositions. Let, then, each sex, and 
each individual, be cultivated and employed 
in those things for which they are fit. The 
claim to justice and merit is equal in man 
and woman; their duties only are different. 
Females are not destined in any circumstances 
to be slaves, or mere patient drudges, nor 
are their duties limited to those of chaste 
wives and good managers of their families 



124 What Thinkers and Scientists Say. 

only : women are required also to direct the 
education of their children, and to be agreeable 
and intelligent companions to their husbands. 
Let their understandings be cultivated by use- 
ful knowledge; by the study of the human 
mind, and the principles of education, and of 
their duties in the direction of their families; 
let their intellects be improved by the study 
of history and of arts and sciences. Girls 
commonly learn only objects of secondary im- 
portance, mere accomplishments; and, hence, 
when they arrive at the age of being united 
to a husband, they are seldom capable of 
supporting permanent friendship, by the ele- 
vation of their minds, and the steady prac- 
tice of the domestic virtues. Many do not 
know how to guide themselves, and still less 
their offspring, their servants, and household 
affairs. Indeed, if the fair sex go on as they 
have done hitherto, they cannot repine that 
they have no share in political concerns. If 
their minds do not take a more serious and 
more solid turn, they may govern in draw- 
ing-rooms, where delicate feelings and polite 
manners are attended to, but they will have 



Rejuvenating Power of Sleep. 125 

no permanent influence on the laws of so- 
ciety. — G. Spurzheim, M.D. 

REJUVENATING- POWER OF SLEEP. 

Sleep is the great rejuvenator of the nerv- 
ous energies, the winder up of force in the 
nervous coils of the brain, which gives a good 
running power for the day. Deprive the brain 
of the time required for the restoration of 
its energies, and there is experienced at first 
a dull, heavy, inert feeling, often accompanied 
by headache and a lifeless, nnrested condi- 
tion of the whole body. Continue this longer, 
and more serious evidences of mischief begin 
to be manifested. The state of the blood, the 
time of life, and the inherent strength or 
weakness of the nervous system, determine 
the nature of the mischief which prolonged 
lack of sufficient sleep brings on. In very 
young persons, convulsions, congestions, and 
acute inflammation of the brain are very likely 
to occur ; but when the lack of sleep is not 
so great, but more protracted, the child either 
acquires a stupid, listless manner, or a very 
irritable, nervous one, bordering upon actual 
disease. Later in life, the deprivation of an 



126 What Thinkers and Scientists Say. 

adequate amount of sleep, keeping the brain 
'in a state of forced activity, its tissues be- 
come redder than natural, and various uneasy 
sensations are felt in the head, of a dull, 
heavy character, bordering upon acute pain. 
Connected thought becomes almost impossible, 
and the entire body sympathizes and suffers 
by the lack of nervous tone. If yet further 
prolonged, the slight derangement passes into 
actual disease ; in those with impure blood 
into a low form of nervous fever with de- 
lirium ; and in those with pure blood, into 
acute insanity, congestion, and softening of 
the brain, or into an attack of apoplexy, or 
paralysis. — J. It. Black, M.D. 

PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF EXCESSIVE BRAIN 
LABOR. 

Several years ago, desiring to ascertain the 
effects of excessive mental labor upon the brain 
as indicated by the excretion of urine, I per- 
formed a series of experiments upon myself 
by which it was clearly ascertained that the 
solid matter eliminated by the kidneys was 
notably increased in direct relation with the 
extent to which the brain was worked. All 
this was, for the time being, at least, within 



Training Both Sides of the Brain. 127 

the limits of health. But by persevering with 
the experiments, and carrying the mental ex- 
ertion to a still higher point, a stage would 
have been reached at which the decomposi- 
tion of brain substance would have been 
greater than the formative processes, and then 
disease would have existed. I would have 
been living, as it were, on my brain capital, 
instead of the income, and brain bankruptcy 
would have been only a question of time, 
just as it is in financial matters. This is 
exactly what people do with their brains con- 
tinually. Overwork causes them to use up 
their brains faster than they make them, and, 
as a consequence, that organ, which of all 
others it is essential to keep in a healthy con- 
dition, becomes the seat of serious disease. 
— William A. Hammond, M.D. 

TRAINING BOTH SIDES OF THE BRAIN. 

A greater supply of blood to the left 
hemisphere incites this hemisphere to more 
brain work, and the right side of the body 
to more muscular work; but let the training 
of the left side of the body call for more 
blood, and the right hemisphere will soon 
receive more blood and be better able to 



128 What Thinkers and Scientists Say. 

assist or supplement the left in brain work. 
....By this means may be restored to our 
race an inexpensive power, more permanent 
than steam, and equally applicable to mental 
and physical labor; a power which, in many 
cases, can double the products, and which, 
in all cases, can save or economize the or- 
dinary one-sided powers. Through the resti- 
tution to our children of this natural capac- 
ity, the diseases and infirmities which attack 
one side of the body or the other would 
become unknown or rare. More continuous 
learning and thinking could be accomplished, 
and the fatal consequences of excessive strain 
on the brain would remain the accidents of 
age, instead of becoming the ironic rewards 
of young, heroic effort. Man would be rendered 
more serviceable as a worker, more harmoni- 
ous in his movements, and more , delicate and 
thorough in his perceptions, and more kind 
and amiable in his family relations. In 
short, the humane temper and passions would 
be harmonized to a point which the mind 
cannot foresee to-day, but whose social con- 
sequences cannot be over-estimated. It seems 
but yesterday that the lamented Agassiz urged 



Blood and Mental Vigor. 129 

his pupils of Penikese Island to become " am- 
bidextrous," if they wanted to become good 
naturalists ; and my illustrious friend, Brown- 
Sequard, proclaimed at his Lowell Institute 
lectures " the equal training of both sides in 
our children as an urgent necessity." — Db. Se- 
guin. 

amount of blood necessary to mental vigok. 
A very instructive class of facts may be 
adduced, connecting mental action with the 
quantity and quality of the blood supplied to 
the brain. No organ is active without blood. 
The demand made by the brain corresponds 
with the extent and energy of its functions. 
Deficiency in the circulation is accompanied 
with feeble manifestations of mind. In sleep, 
there is a diminution of the supply of arterial 
blood to the brain. General depletion lowers 
all the functions, mind included. On the 
other hand, the cerebral circulation is quick- 
ened, the feelings are roused, the thoughts 
are more rapid, the volitions more vehement; 
great mental excitement is always accompa- 
nied with an unusual flow of blood, often out- 
wardly shown by the throbbing of the vessels. 



130 What Thinkers and Scientists Say. 

In delirium, the circulation attains an ex- 
traordinary pitch. — Alexander Bain, L.L.D. 

TAKE CARE OF YOUR HEALTH. 

Let me utter one practical word ; take 
care of your health. There have been men 
who by wise attention to this point might 
have risen to eminence — might have made 
great discoveries, written great poems, com- 
manded armies, or ruled states — but who 
by unwise neglect of this point have come 
to nothing. Imagine Hercules as oarsman 
in a rotten boat ; what can he do there 
but by the very force of his stroke expidite 
the ruin of his craft. Take care, then, of the 
timbers of your boat, and avoid all practices 
likely to introduce either wet or dry rot 
among them. And this is not to be accom- 
plished by desultory or intermittent efforts of 
the will, but by the formation of habits. 

The will no doubt has sometimes to put 
forth its strength in order to strangle or 
crush the special temptation. But the forma- 
tion of right habits is essential to your per- 
manent security. They diminish your chance 
of falling when assailed, and they augment 



Neuter Verbs. 131 

your chance of recovery when overthrown. — 
John Tyndall, LL.D., F.R.S. 

NEUTER VERBS. 

Of persons who have led a temperate 
life, those will have the best chance of lon- 
gevity who have done hardly anything else 
but live — what may be called the neuter verbs 
— not active or passive, but only being; who 
have had little to do, little to suffer; but 
have led a life of quiet retirement, without 
exertion of body or mind — avoiding all trou- 
blesome enterprise, and seeking only a com- 
fortable obscurity. Such men, if of a pretty 
strong constitution, and if they escape any 
remarkable calamities, are likely to live long. 
But much affliction, or much exertion, and, 
still more, both combined, will be sure to tell 
upon the constitution — if not at once, yet at 
least as years advance. One who is of the 
character of an active or passive verb, or still 
more, both combined, though he may be said 
to have lived long in everything but years, 
will rarely reach the age of the neuters. — 
Archbishop Whateley. 



132 What Thinkers and Scientists Say. 

EXERCISING THE BRAIN. 

The proper object of life is the develop- 
ment of the mind, and this, the true end of 
all our own exertions, should never be lost 
sight of; for it is one which never disap- 
points. It can only be attained by keeping 
up the activity of the faculties ; for the brain, 
as well as the muscles, requires constant ex- 
ercise to maintain its power: unemployed, it 
loses what it once possessed, and may sink 
into mediocrity from a comparative state of 
excellence. If the mind is altogether absorbed 
in the pursuit of wealth, it gradually loses 
all desire for that superiority which alone 
satisfies its higher faculties. In the midst 
of those necessary avocations upon which 
the welfare of our families depends, we should 
spare some moments to maintain at least that 
degree of improvement w r hich had been ac- 
quired; it is essential to the general health 
that we should do so. We know that bodily 
health cannot be maintained without due ex- 
ercise, neither can mental — they are mutually 
dependent — and to neglect one is to neglect 
the other. As we advance in life, the im- 
portance of a healthy mind is even greater 



Exercising the Brain. 133 

than a healthy body, for the one enables us 
to bear the evils of the other, and the de- 
cay of the body precedes that of the mind. 
In our progress through this nether world, 
a rightly judging, well-stored mind compen- 
sates for many disappointments, and alleviates 
the effects of the vanity of our wishes ; for 
there are few who, before the age of fifty, 
do not find many of the aspirations of early 
life, only vanity. 

It is hardly an exaggeration to assert, that 
the most important law of health is a well- 
regulated mind. The tone of the mind has 
the most important influence on health. If a 
man's pursuits are rational, and in harmony 
with the laws of God — if he walks in the 
ways of wisdom, and his thoughts are directed 
to proper objects — if he keeps his mind in an 
active state by the constant acquisition of 
knowledge — if his meditations lead him to have 
constantly in his mind's eye that he is not a 
mere dweller on earth, but a being destined 
to exist in a more exalted state, where the 
mind which he is now educating shall live in 
brightness inconceivable to his present thoughts 
— the self-satisfaction so produced will have 



134 What Thinkers and Scientists Say. 

the most exhilarating influence on his health. 
— Lionel John Beale, M.R.C.S. 

HOW CHANCELLOR KENT WAS EDUCATED. 

I was brought up among the highlands 
and hilly parts of Connecticut, and was never 
kept on the high-pressure plan of instruction. 
It was not then the fashion. I went to school, 
and studied in the easy, careless way, until I 
went to college. I was daily, and sometimes 
for a month or more, engaged in juvenile 
play, and occasional efforts on the farm. I 
was roaming over the fields, and fishing, and 
sailing, and swimming, and riding, and play- 
ing ball, so as not to be but very superfi- 
cially learned, when I entered college. I 
was not in college half the time. I was at 
home, at leisure, or at gentle work, and much 
on horseback, but never in the least dissi- 
pated. I easily kept pace with my class, for 
it was in the midst of the American War, 
and there were few scholars, nor much stimulus 
to learn. Silent leges inter aromas. When I 
went to study law, I had my own leisure, 
and great exercise and relaxation in enchant- 
ing rides, and home visits, until I got to 



Origin of Abuse of the Mind. 135 

the bar. I lived plain — drank nothing bat 
water, ate heartily of all plain, wholesome 
food that came in my way — was delighted 
with rural scenery, and active and healthy as 
I could be. Here I laid the basis of a sound 
constitution, in which my brain had not been 
unduly pressed or excited, and only kept its 
symmetry with the rest of the animal sys- 
tem. It was not until I was twenty -four 
that I found that I was very superficially 
taught, and then voluntarily betook myself 
to books, and to learn the classics, and every- 
thing else I could read. The ardor and ra- 
pidity with which I pursued my law and lit- 
erary course were great and delightful, and 
my health and spirits were sound and uni- 
form, and neither has faltered, down to this 
day. — Chancellor Kent. 

ORIGIN OF ABUSE OF THE MIND. 

The gross errors committed by parents in 
overworking the brains of their offspring has 
its origin in the false system of philosophy, 
which has existed from the time of Plato to 
the present day, and by which the mind is 
regarded as a separate entity, having no sort 



136 What Thinkers and Scientists Say. 

of connection with and being nowise influ- 
enced by matter. If Phrenology do nothing 
else than dispel this preposterous idea it will 
accomplish much. Had this science been dis- 
covered and its principles acted upon a thous- 
and years ago, what grievous errors in edu- 
cation, what incalculable injury to the brain, 
would have been avoided; and what a mass 
of splendid talent which has been employed 
in bootless metaphysical speculations might have 
been profitably turned into more useful chan- 
nels ! So long as people were ignorant of the 
fact, that in this life the mind works through 
the agency of material organs, no rational 
views of education and of the true method of 
preserving the health of the brain could be 
entertained. Many writers before the time of 
Gall knew, indeed, the intimate relations ex- 
isting between mind and matter, but it w r as 
the science of Phrenology, first discovered by 
him, which turned the public mind strongly 
and practically to this important point, and 
will doubtless in time work a thorough change 
in public sentiment, and be attended with 
most happy results. — Robert Macintosh. 



Intellect Not All. 137 

INTELLECT NOT ALL. 

I will simply say here, although I cannot 
as yet give proofs, that there are other powers 
of the intellect besides the ordinary mental 
powers. These latter are extremely limited 
and cannot reach beyond a certain point. 

But there are those now living who per- 
haps one of these days will make some dis- 
covery or invention that will make a revolution 
in our theories and medical practice. 

There are those who have the gift of genius, 
which is superior to the ordinary mental pow- 
ers. Discoveries are made not by the ordinary 
mental powers, but by something above and , 
beyond them. The former puts a question 
to the latter and it sends back the answer. 

"We see this illustrated on certain occasions 
when we are endeavoring with all our powers 
of concentration to recollect a name that we 
have forgotten, when suddenly (when we are 
not thinking of it) the name returns to our 
memory. This is due to the action of that 
power, of which I have spoken, which is be- 
yond the ordinary mental powers. 

The will power acts on the nerves by a 
sort of telegraphic communication, and does 



138 What Thinkers and Scientists Say. 

not act on special muscles at one time, but 
produces variety and complication of move- 
ments at the same time. It never gives an 
order in this way : " I wish this muscle to 
act." 

Those who use their muscles the best and 
with the greatest effect are never conscious of 
doing so. — Dr. Brown-Sequard. 

EARLY MENTAL CULTURE A MISTAKE. 

The history of the most distinguished men 
will, I believe, lead us to the conclusion, that 
early mental culture is not necessary, in order 
to produce the highest powers of mind. There 
is scarcely an instance of a great man, one 
who has accomplished great results, and has 
obtained the gratitude of mankind, who in 
early life received an education in reference 
to the wonderful labors which he afterward 
performed. The greatest philosophers, war- 
riors, and poets, those men who have stamped 
their own characters upon the age in which 
they lived, or who, as Cousin says, have 
been the " true representatives of the spirit 
and ideas of their time," have received no 
better education, when young, than their as- 



Early Mental Culture a Mistake. 139 

sociates who were never known beyond their 
own neighborhood. In general their education 
was but small in their early life. Self-edu- 
cation, in after life, made them great, so far 
as education had any effect. For their ele- 
vation they were indebted to no early hot- 
house culture, but, like the towering oak, they 
grew up amid the storm and the tempest rag- 
ing around. Parents, nurses, and early acquaint- 
ances, to be sure, relate many anecdotes of the 
childhood of distinguished men, and they are 
published and credited; but where the truth is 
known it is ascertained that many, like Sir Isaac 
Newton, who, according to his own statement, 
was "inattentive to study, and ranked very 
low in the school until the age of twelve," 
or, like Napoleon, who is described by those 
who knew him intimately when a child, as 
6C having good health, and in other respects 
was like other boys," do not owe their great- 
ness to any early mental application or dis- 
cipline. On the contrary, it often appears, 
that those who are kept from school by ill- 
health or some other cause in early life, and 
left to follow their own inclination as re- 
spects study, manifest in after life powers of 



140 What Thinkers and Scientists Say. 

mind which make them the admiration of the 
world. — Amariah Brigham, M.D. 

WALTER SCOTT'S BOYHOOD. 

Here is a boy lying about in the fields, 
when he should have been at his Latin gram- 
mar ; reading novels when he should have been 
entering college; spearing salmon instead of 
embellishing a peroration. Yet this person- 
age came out of this wild kind of discipline, 
graced with the rarest combination of qualifi- 
cations for enjoying existence, achieving fame, 
and blessing society. Deeply learned, though 
neither the languages, nor the philosophy of 
the schools, made part of his acquisition; 
robust as a plowman ; able to walk like a 
pedlar ; industrious as a handicraftman ; in- 
trepid as the bravest hero of his own im- 
mortal works. Here is enough to put us on 
inquiring, not whether learning, and even 
school discipline, be good things; but whether 
the knowledge usually thought most essential, 
the school discipline which is commonly es- 
teemed indispensable, be in fact either the 
one or the other. — Harriet Martineau. 



A Wise Thought from Spencer. 141 

A WISE THOUGHT FROM HERBERT SPENCER. 

Our general conclusion is, then, that the 
ordinary treatment of children is, in various 
ways, seriously prejudicial. It errs in defi- 
cient feeding ; in deficient clothing ; in deficient 
exercise (among girls at least) ; and in exces- 
sive mental application. Considering the re- 
gime as a whole, its tendency is too exact- 
ing; it asks too much and gives too little. 
In the extent to which it taxes the vital 
energies, it makes the juvenile life much more 
like the adult life than it should be. It 
overlooks the truth that, as in the foetus the 
entire vitality is expended in the direction of 
growth, as in the infant the expenditure of 
vitality in growth is so great as to leave ex- 
tremely little for either physical or mental 
action, so throughout childhood and youth 
growth is the dominant requirement to which 
all others must be subordinated — a require- 
ment which dictates the giving of much and 
the taking away of little — a requirement 
which, therefore, restricts the exertion of body 
and mind to a degree proportionate to the 
rapidity of growth — a requirement which per- 



142 What Thinkers and Scientists Say. 

mits the mental and physical activities to 
increase only as fast as the rate of growth 
diminishes. 

Regarded from another point of view, 
this high-pressure education manifestly results 
from our passing phase of civilization. In 
primitive times, when aggression and defense 
were the leading social activities, bodily vigor 
with its accompanying courage were the de- 
siderata ; and then education was almost 
w r holly physical; mental cultivation was little 
cared for, and, indeed, as in our own feudal 
ages, was often treated with contempt. But 
now that our state is relatively peaceful — 
now that our muscular power is of use for 
little else than manual labor, while social 
success of nearly every kind depends very 
much on mental power — our education has 
become almost exclusively mental. Instead 
of respecting the body and ignoring the mind, 
we now respect the mind and ignore the body. 
Both these attitudes are wrong;. We do not 
yet sufficiently realize the truth that, as, in 
this life of ours, the physical underlies the 
mental, the mental must not be developed at 



A. Wise Thought from Spencer. 143 

the expense of the physical. The ancient 
and modern conceptions must be combined. 

Perhaps nothing will so much hasten the 
time when body and mind will both be ade- 
quately cared for as a diffusion of the belief 
that the preservation of health is a duty. 
Few seem conscious that there is such a 
thing as physical morality. Men's habitual 
words and acts imply the idea that they are 
at liberty to treat their bodies as they please. 
Disorders entailed by disobedience to nature's 
dictates they regard simply as grievances; not 
as the effects of ^ conduct more or less fla- 
gitious. Though the evil consequences in- 
flicted on their dependents, and on future gen- 
erations, are often as great as those caused 
by crime, yet they do not think themselves 
in any degree criminal. It is true that, in 
case of drunkenness, the viciousness of a 
purely bodily transgression is recognized ; 
but none appear to infer that if this bodily 
transgression is vicious, so, too, is every bodily 
transgression. The fact is that all breaches 
of the laws of health are physical sins. 
When this is generally seen, then, and per- 
haps not till then, will the physical training 



144 What Thinkers and Scientists Say. 

of the young receive all the attention it 
deserves. — Herbert Spencer. 



HOT-HOUSE BRAINS. 

A man cannot make a hot-house of his 
brains, especially while young, without cut- 
ting short his life — in most cases, at forty or 
thereabouts, he has, say, twenty years of 
work. If he treats himself properly, works 
only at moderate pressure, allows his natural 
development, physical and mental, he is as 
likely to live, vigorous, till seventy. He has, 
to put it lower, forty years of work — double 
what the forcing process would allow him. 
And we have pointed out that it is not un- 
fair to claim for each of the forty years a 
much higher average activity than for each of 
the twenty. 

Every young man of parts has thus to 
choose between the hot-house and open-air 
systems of brain nurture. It is true that the 
multiplicity of things now to be learned 
presses him hard — this is the more reason 
why he should consider. The habit-model of 
useful brains of this age should be that great 
scholar and worker who said that he accom- 



Book-Gluttony and Lesson-Bibbing. 145 

plished his vast amount of daily work by 
taking "plenty of sleep." Plenty of sleep, 
plenty of exercise, plenty of wholesome food, 
plenty of time for its digestion, plenty of all 
that nature calls for- — these are to build up 
the intellectual giants wdio are to lead prog- 
ress in the time to come. Let those aspir- 
ants who disdain nature and her laws have 
a care ! " In the physical world," it has been 
well written, "there is no forgiveness of sin!" 

R. It. BoWKER. 

BOOK-GLUTTONY AND LESSON-BIBB ING. 

Above all things, let my imaginary pu- 
pil have preserved the freshness and vigor of 
youth in his mind as well as his body. The 
educational abomination of desolation of the 
present day is the stimulation of young peo- 
ple to work at high pressure by incessant 
competitive examinations. Some wise man 
(who probably was not an early riser) has 
said of early risers in general, that they are 
conceited all the forenoon and stupid all the 
afternoon. Now, whether this is true of early 
risers in the common acceptation of the word 
or not, I will not pretend to say; but it is 



146 What Thinkers and Scientists Say. 

too often true of the unhappy children who 
are forced to rise too early in their classes. 
They are conceited all the forenoon of their 
life, and stupid all the afternoon. The vigor 
and freshness which should have been stored up 
for the purposes of the hard struggle for ex- 
istence in practical life have been washed 
out of them by precocious mental debauch- 
ery — by book - gluttony and lesson - bibbing. 
Their faculties are worn out by the strain 
put upon their callow brains, and they are 
demoralized by worthless childish triumphs 
before the real work of life begins. I have 
no compassion for sloth, but youth has more 
need for intellectual rest than age; and the 
cheerfulness, the tenacity of purpose, the power 
of work, which make many a successful man 
what he is, must often be placed to the credit, 
not of his hours of industry, but to that of 
his hours of idleness in boyhood. Even the 
hardest worker of us all, if he has to deal 
with anything above mere details, will do 
well, now and again, to let his brains lie fal- 
low for a space. The next crop of thought 
will certainly be all the fuller in the ear, 



Activity of the Mind. 147 

and the weeds fewer. — T. W. Huxley, M.D., 
F.K.S. 

CONTINUED AND VARIED ACTIVITY OF THE MIND. 

Continued and varied action of the mind 
are essentials to length of life and health of 
life, and those brain-workers who have shown 
the greatest skill in varied pursuits, even when 
their works have been laborious, have lived 
longest and happiest and best. 

The truth is that when men do not die 
of some direct accident or disease, they die, in 
nine cases out of ten, from nervous failure. 
And this is the peculiarity of nervous failure 
— that it may be fatal from one point of the 
nervous organism, the rest being sound. A 
man may, therefore, wear himself out by one 
mental exercise too exclusively followed, while 
he may live through many exercises extended 
over far greater intervals of time and involv- 
ing more real labor, if they be distributed 
over many seats of mental faculty. 

Just as a sheet of ice will bear many 
weights if they be equally distributed upon 
it, but will give way and break up at one 
point from a lesser weight, so the brain will 



148 What Thinkers and Scientists Say. 

bear an equally distributed strain of work 
for many years, while pressure not more 
severe on one point will destroy it in a 
limited period, and with it the body it 
animates. 

CONCLUSION. 

Let health and education go hand-in-hand, 
and the progress of the world, physically and 
mentally, is sound and sure. 

Let the brain, in the first stage of life, 
make its own inventory ; distress it not with 
learning, sadness, romance or passion. Let 
it take nature as a second mother for its 
teacher. 

In the second stage, instill gently, and 
learn the order of mind that is being: rendered 
a receiving agency ; allay rather than encour- 
age ambition ; do not push on the strong, but 
help the feeble. 

In adolescence, let the studies, taking their 
natural bent, be more decisive and defined as to- 
ward some particular end or object, but never 
distressing, anxious, or distractingly ambitious. 
Let this be an age of preparation for entering 
the garden of knowledge, and of modest claim 
to admission there; not for a charge by assault 



Conclusion. 149 

and for an entry with clarion and standard 
and claim of so much conquered possessions. 

And for the rest, let the course be a con- 
tinued learning, so that with the one and 
chief pursuit of life other pursuits may min- 
gle happily, and life be not 

"a dissonant thing, 

Amid the universal harmony." 

— Benjamin W. Kichakdson. 



PHYSICAL AND INTELLECTUAL HABITS OF DIS- 
TINGUISHED MEN AND WOMEN, 

AS DESCRIBED BY THEMSELVES. 



O. B. FROTHIjSTGHAM. 

My Dear Sir : You ask me to put 
down on paper the rules of physical and in- 
tellectual health that I have observed in the 
course of my life. I do so with pleasure, 
though the story will be brief and bare, and 
not much, perhaps, to your purpose. My 
youth was past and my habits were formed 
before attention was much called to questions 
of hygiene, even in its broadest aspects. The 



152 Physical and Intellectual HabiU. 

temperance reform, now so well established, 
so reasonably advocated, and so generally ap- 
plied, hardly touched the well-to-do classes. 
In regard to clothing, food, sleep, exercise, 
general maxims were, deemed sufficient; the 
results of physiological inquiry into the con- 
ditions of health in the brain and nervous 
system were either not reached or not com- 
municated; less was expected and less de- 
manded of men and women then than now, 
and less, consequently, was obtained. The 
conscientious man who was devoted to intel- 
tectual pursuits, and wished to get a fair 
amount of good work from his faculties, such 
as they were, made his rules of conduct for 
himself, or applied the best rules current, 
according to his needs. 

In my own case it soon became evident 
that simplicity and method were the two 
cardinal principles of practice. The conduct 
of life must be regulated; days must be 
counted; hours must be reserved and set apart; 
a plan must be formed, not so rigidly that 
departures from it in cases of necessity or 
convenience were forbidden, yet rigidly enough 
to prevent waste from casual interruptions 



O. J3. Frothingham. 153 

and distractions. From the time when I was 
old enough to feel rationally accountable for 
the use of time and the economy of men- 
tal power, it has been my custom to devote 
the early part of every day — say from eight 
or nine o'clock till one or two — to serious 
mental work. The afternoon was given to 
exercise, recreation and social intercourse. No 
severe employment of the brain was pursued 
late at night or far into the evening. Not 
half a dozen times in my life have I stud- 
ied or toiled till midnight. In order that 
sleep might be quiet and refreshing, the brain 
was allowed to cool, and the blood encour- 
aged to circulate evenly through the frame. 
Eight hours was the old rule for sleep- 
ing. I have never had more than seven ; of 
late years six has been the utmost attainable, 
and, if sound and regular, it has been suf- 
ficient for my needs. Though early rising 
was commended, both by precept and exam- 
ple, the injunction to greet the dawn as it 
tripped over the hill -tops never impressed 
me. "Sunrises and such like gauds," as 
Charles Lamb says, did not interest me. It 
seemed to me that early rising was a mat- 



154: Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

ter of temperament, and that on such a point 
the constitution should within reasonable lim- 
its be consulted, though I have no question that 
the habit may be cultivated, and in most 
cases to advantage ; always to advantage when 
the economies of life allow early hours for 
retiring. The object being to get out of the 
system all it will yield healthily, the ques- 
tion whether the demand shall be made and 
complied with at one period of the twenty- 
four hours, or another, is secondary ; that ob- 
ject being kept in view, the individual may 
be permitted to consult the mechanism of 
his frame. 

Touching eating and drinking, the only 
rules prescribed, in my early manhood, were, 
not to eat or drink too much — not to eat 
or drink what was manifestly hurtful — and 
not to eat or drink at unreasonable — that is, 
at unwholesome — hours. The exigencies of 
modern city life make it convenient to dine 
after sundown — as late sometimes as seven or 
eight o'clock. The old fashion of three meals 
in a day, the chief one not far from the 
middle, by two or three o'clock, seems to me 
preferable on all accounts. It falls in with 



O. B. Frothing ham. 155 

a more natural division of hours and em- 
ployments; it gives an interval of rest when 
it is required ; it secures a brighter evening 
and a more serene night. 

Thanks to a vigorous constitution and to 
out-door exercise, ball playing in youth, walk- 
ing and lifting in later years, 1 have been 
able to eat and digest such food as was 
provided, animal or vegetable, cereals or fruits. 
There were, in my day, but few doctrin- 
aires on questions of diet. I was never a 
theorist ; never a vegetarian ; always carnivo- 
rous ; always inclined to eat the most nourish- 
ing and invigorating food, but always willing 
to concede the wisdom of a different prac- 
tice for others. The circumstance of having 
been entirely free from dyspepsia, so free as 
not to know what it was till past middle life, 
and still being unacquainted with it in any 
but its lightest form, does not embolden me 
to lay down the law to dyspeptics, nor does 
it make me proof against the consideration 
that a different regimen might, ;n my own 
case, have resulted in greater vigor, elastic- 
ity, and happiness of sensation. 

In one respect, I am satisfied that it would, 



156 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

I mean, in regard to the use of wine. I was 
familiar from my boyhood with the sight of 
wine and the spectacle of its use ; it was on all 
the tables at which I sat, and after manhood 
was reached it was freely offered me. From 
that time on, the inclination to take wine 
has never been checked by any save personal 
considerations. It was always used sparingly; 
sometimes for long periods it was wholly dis- 
used, there being no desire for it. It was 
never v used except at meal times; it was 
never employed for purposes of nervous stim- 
ulation; neither tea nor coffee, both of which 
were used, were ever, in any single instance, 
employed for that ; and no positive ill effect 
is now or ever has been traceable to either 
them or the wine. 

And yet, were my life to live over again, 
I should accustom myself to abstinence, if 
not total all but total, from all three. It 
seems to me now, on looking back, that some- 
thing of dullness and languor, something of 
exhaustion and dreaminess, something of leth- 
argy, something too of heat and irritability, 
may be chargeable to a practice not in any 
grave degree harmful or blameworthy. The 



O. B. Frothing ham. 157 

faculties have been less keen and patient 
than they would have been under a strictly 
natural regimen. My present habits will not, 
it is likely, be changed, unless circumstances 
compel me to change them; but I should 
earnestly advise young people who are form- 
ing habits, to rely on their natural resources 
of power, and to keep those resources full by 
natural means: wholesome exercise, a plenti- 
ful supply of air and light, sufficient sleep, 
and the " food that is convenient." 

Is it owing to the prejudices of my edu- 
cation, or to the felicity of my constitution, 
or, in part, to both, that the present scru- 
pulosity in regard to dietetics, and the nice 
observance of the laws of hygiene, seem 
to me a little exaggerated, and, so far, un- 
wise ? Are the uses of hardship confined 

to the moral world ? Mav it not be that the 

■i 

physical system requires for its full vigor the 
discipline that comes with the effort to accom- 
modate itself to harsh natural conditions ? Is 
there not a modicum of truth in the homely 
saying that " every man must eat his peck 01 
dirt," not as a disagreeable necessity which 
he cannot avoid, but as a condition of vigor 



158 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

in his digestive functions? As the bird fan- 
cier mingles bird seed with fine gravel to ensure 
the health of his feathered proteges, so Provi- 
dence, as we call it, compels us to become 
robust by a miscellaneous and provoking 
diet. You are engaged in the humane work 
of altering the physical conditions of life, 
so that men and women may attain a greater 
measure of bodily and mental health with 
less effort and danger. It must cheer you 
to know that a good many of your fellow 
creatures have attained a reasonable degree of 
both, notwithstanding the imperfection of their 
conditions and the misfortune of their habits. 
With the best conditions there will always 
be friction enough; for, as the conditions are 
improved, the standard of bodily and mental 
health will be raised, and the " struggle for 
existence " will be transferred to a higher 

plane. 

Faithfully yours, 

O. B. Frothingham. 
New York, October 14, 1877. 



Francis W. JSlewman. 159 

n. 

FRANCIS W. NEWMAN. 

Dear Sir : You request me to furnish you 
from my own experience with hints that may 
be useful to others on the habits of intellectual 
life, as conducive to the welfare of the brain and 
nerves. If I were so egotistic as to reply 
by a minute history of my physical experi- 
ences, it might afford (I presume) material 
for rumination to the wise ; but my circum- 
stances have always been exceptional, gener- 
ally advantageously so, making it useless to 
bid others do as I have done. For instance, 
if I give a hint to any one, " Never over- 
work yourself!" (which I make no doubt is 
a wise precept), I know, alas ! that many 
will say, U I dare not stop work when I first 
feel fatigue of brain : I shall lose my em- 
ployment: I need to be manifestly ill and 
gravely disabled, before others can see that 
I really must stop." In every profession a 
man, for years perhaps, labors with very 
scanty and inadequate pay ; then when his 
merits at last are known, he gets too much 
work, but reluctantly admits this. He thinks 



160 Physical and Intellectual Jiabits. 

"to make hay while the sun shines," and 
make up for the past ill remuneration. This 
I believe to be a serious danger to every 
successful practitioner ; though it is hard to 
believe that if he be earnest to take up 
work with smaller income, it is not in his 
power. I have known, intimately, sad cases 
of successful professional men thoroughly ruin- 
ing their health, from dread to lose the mo- 
ment of benefiting their families. 

As for myself, all my life I have had less, 
far less, of ostensible and necessary work 
than I was able easily to perform; and I 
have studied and written from love of it 
more hours by far than my public duties oc- 
cupied or needed. Hence I have always been 
able to relax and take my ease, as soon as 
I had incipient symptoms of mental strain. 
Nevertheless, at one time I sadly suffered 
from sleeplessness, through the excitement of 
imagination. I first suffered in this way (which 
took the form of writing letters home, with 
head on pillow, to my mother and other 
friends) after a partial recovery from a terrible 
fever at Aleppo. I may say, in parenthesis, that 
I now impute that fever entirely to my ignorantly 



Francis IF. Newman. 161 

continuing to eat heartily of flesh-meat dur- 
ing the heat of the summer in that climate. 
Five immense efforts of nature, by violent 
sweating, did but temporarily throw the fever 
off; a sixth was successful. But meanwhile 
my physician, my kind and tender companion, 
treated me as was the mode of that time 
(1831), and put 220 leeches on me, causing 
me enormous fatigue and reducing me to a 
skeleton. The fever left me on the seventeenth 
day, but I could not stand up (if I remem- 
ber) for three weeks after, and then had to 
learn to walk again, like an infant, darting 
from chair to chair. The fever, or perhaps 
rather the treatment, permanently weakened 
my nerves. A tap at the door will make me 
jump ; but previously I could have borne the 
report of a pistol in the room. I also had 
sleeplessness from inability to control my mind 
when I went to rest. This returned upon 
me much later. To this day, what is called 
a soiree, where one meets many people and 
talks on numerous subjects, is very apt to de- 
stroy my sleep : so does ascending any great 
height, whence I look down on depths. Though 
there has been no possible danger, absolutely 



162 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

nothing to alarm, yet, when I am about to 
sleep, I start up as from the side of a prec- 
ipice. This is a peculiarity, denoting that 
my nerves never recovered their original ro- 
bustness. 

That I entirely recovered (at first by horse- 
exercise), my muscular strength does seem to 
me remarkable. Whether at all imputable to 
the fact that I have never in my life had 
the habit of making alcoholic drink an ordi- 
nary beverage, and have retained my child- 
ish dislike for it, others must judge. In my 
own estimate, I had always a good appetite, 
but others called me a small eater. I only 
know that my habit was to dine on the first 
solid dish which presented itself: this goes a 
great way to save one from eating too much. 
I have maintained the same weight all my 
life since early youth — that is, for more than 
fifty continuous years — and have remained wiry, 
without any fat. If I may advise any one, it 
is, to eat the very least in quantity which will 
keep him in health. Any superfluous food 
must either derange health, or use up (in 
chemical process to get rid of the superfluity) 
force which else would be at his voluntary 



Francis W. Newman. 163 

disposal. It is a great thing in advancing age 
to be light as a boy. My digestion was always 
painful, until I became a vegetarian, ten years 
ago; but though painful, I make no doubt it 
was successful, to judge by the state of my 
skin, and my unchanged weight. But I regard 
abstinence from flesh-meat to be an advantage 
to an intellectual and sedentary person, scarcely 
inferior to abstinence from wine, ale, etc. Sed- 
entary I suppose I must be called ; yet I have 
from youth been an active walker, and still, at 
seventy-two, walk very sharply, though seldom 
long distances. Above all, I covet sleep. The 
more I sleep, the better I am. No student 
should grudge himself sleep. I count seven 
hours normal ; and six too little ; if I can 
get now and then eight, my brain is stronger 
for it, and I can work more hours after it. 
Perhaps I ought not to conceal that I am 
sadly out of harmony with the prevalent doc- 
trine of the day concerning hardihood. When 
I was a young man I had my own theories 
about bracing and hardening my body. I 
slept on a hard straw mattress. I generally 
scorned a greatcoat, at least a warm one. In 
Asiatic travel I had plenty of necessary hard- 



164: Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

ships. I slept with open window in most 
seasons, but trial brought me round to an 
opposite conviction. At University College, 
London, I found that the young men with 
open necks had no such immunity from cold 
and cough as I enjoyed through my wraps. 
One of my greatest distresses there was speak- 
ing (loud) against their coughs and nose-blow- 
ings. Except in warm summer, I seldom rise 
early, because I become cold in sitting still, 
especially after the night has chilled the room. 
Once only in seventeen years was I absent 
from my lecture-room in London through in- 
ability to use my voice ; an inability caused 
only by struggling against the noises of coughs, 
etc. But my dear wife (whom I lost last 
year) said that in more than forty years she 
had not known me have a cough. Yet, at this 
moment, I am the weaker from having foolishly 
"roughed it" eight years ago, when in Sep- 
tember sudden cold came on after great heat, 
and I had no winter flannels with me. Let 
me add, that I hold to Cicero's advice (given 
to a student), "Take exercise, so much as is 
needful for health ; but not so much as will 



Francis W. Newman. 165 

conduce to the greatest bodily strength." I 
have no doubt that hard, muscular work 
stupefies the brain. I have as much manly 
strength as my duties require. Not long back, 
a person standing at rny side, while I spoke 
loud to a large audience for an hour and a 
quarter, told me that my last sentence was 
uttered as vigorously as my first, and that 
he had watched in vain to hear me failing. 
But of course in lifting weights, etc., I could 
not be called anything but a weak man. 
What does it matter? Each has his own 
specialty. "With no padding of fat, I am glad 
of good thick clothing ; or in bed, of soft un- 
dercloth or feather-bed. I shun linen sheets 
and everything glossy; preferring rough cot- 
ton. In short, I try to nourish and cherish 
my skin, and find it succeeds. Dry rubbing 
suits me far better than cold baths. 

I am respectfully yours, 

F. W. Newman. 

Weston super Mare, ) 
November 12, 1877. \ 



166 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

III. 
T. L. NICHOLS, M.D. 

My Dear Doctor : You have chosen a good 
subject for your new book. All civilized men 
need to understand the Hygiene of the Brain 
and Nerves. The English are not so rapid and 
helter-skelter as the Americans; they take 
things easier and are more methodical. With 
a climate never hot, and never cold, though 
often wet, they get more out-of-door exer- 
cise, and I am often obliged to restrain the 
tendencies of invalids to expend in long 
walks the force needed to build them up in 
health. I have known a slender little girl, 
who I feared would die of consumption, walk 
fifteen miles across country for a visit, and re- 
turn home the same evening. The fresh air 
and all the breathing is good, but I enjoin 
greater economy of force. 

Methodical habits go into intellectual labor 
as well as business. Authors plod on day 
after day, generally getting to work at ten A. M., 
taking an hour for lunch, and then working 
away till live, when they take a walk before 
dinner. Of course there are some who do not 



T. L. Mchols, 3f.D. 167 

begin to work until sometime after they have 
dined. But these take strong tea or coffee, or 
something stronger, and so work into the small 
hours of the morning. 

My own habits are quite the opposite. I 
rise at five o'clock in summer, often at four, for 
there is nothing more delightful than an Eng- 
lish summer morning. In May and June the 
birds begin to sing at three o'clock, and the 
6un is well up at four. In winter I get to 
work at six, and do the bulk of my work be- 
fore breakfast. Life flows to the rested brain 
and is not drawn away to the stomach. And 
it seems to me that what is called the wear 
and tear of a literary life consist chiefly in 
this contrast. Our vital force is a limited 
quantity. We cannot work fully in two places 
at once. In our work we want it all for 
the brain. When we are about to eat, are 
eating, or have eaten and are digesting our 
food, we want all our force to carry on the 
secretions from salivary glands, stomach glands, 
liver, pancreas, and for all the blood-making 
processes. Therefore, I discourage eating while 
the blood is at work in the brain, or work- 
ing when it is fully employed in assimila- 



168 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

tion. No newspapers, no books, no conversa- 
tion that involves thought at meals. The Eng- 
lish pretty well adhere to this. They may 
glance at the Times at breakfast, but I have 
not heard much intellectual conversation at din- 
ner — none to hurt — and after-dinner speeches 
as a rule do not show signs of brain-work. 
Nor should they. A clever dinner speech 
must be made at the expense of the digestive 
apparatus. Englishmen like to eat alone and 
in silence. The pressure and wear and tear 
of life here seem to me to be more anxiety 
than overwork. It is overworry. 

Just now I am trying an experiment on the 
relations of work to diet, to test upon my- 
self my theory that the trouble of overwork 
is chiefly, if not wholly, in the digestive ap- 
paratus. I have long since found that the 
less I eat, the better I feel, and have lived 
on very moderate amounts of food, but I have 
not accurately weighed and measured to see 
precisely what amount of food is needed. On 
the 5th of November, when people were cel- 
ebrating the festival of Guy Fawkes, I began 
to keep an account of my diet. I eat twice 
a day, at nine and four. I take no stimu- 



T. L. Nichols, M.D. 169 

lants of any kind. The first week I took 
bread and its equivalents, milk, eggs, fruit 
and vegetables, an average of eight ounces a 
day, dry weight, or nearly- — say that of solid 
food like cheese. Of course I do not reckon 
the water in the milk, fruits and vegetables. 
I was not particular about cost, buying as 
needful at the customary prices, and fruits and 
some vegetables are dearer this season than 
usual. The actual cost of my week's diet 
was sixty-eight cents, or a little less than a 
dime a day, not including cost of cooking. 

On my second week, I am eating only 
brown bread, milk and fruit. I like this bet- 
ter. I have found some excellent American 
dried apples, for the English apple crop this year 
is very poor. The weight is about the same — 
the cost a fraction more. I find my brain 
weariness troubling me less and less, and my 
power of work increasing. I wrote yesterday 
a long article — a fair day's work before break- 
fast — and I work twelve to fifteen hours a 
day with very little sense of fatigue. My 
stomach has such light work that all life flows 
freely to the brain, and I can work on, hour 
after hour. Next week I shall leave out the 



170 Physical ana Intellectual Habits. 

milk, and try an entirely vegetable, a perfectly 
Pythagorian, diet of bread and fruit. With 
this I shall find the quantity that suits me 
best, which I expect will be from six to eight 
ounces a day. I shall also give a little time 
to an experiment upon cost. "How to Live 
on Sixpence a Day," which has been trans- 
lated into German, and I believe also into 
Hindustanee (for a mild Brahmin wrote to ask 
my permission), and which was reprinted in 
America with the title of "How to Live on 
a Dime and a half a Day." Luxurious people 
said it was absurd and impossible — and that 
in a country where agricultural laborers are 
expected ,to find shelter, clothing, food, etc., 
for a family, on wages of two dollars a 
week, and where the entire expense of the 
paupers in some great workhouses, including 
salaries of overseers, is less than sixty cents 
per week. When bantered on the subject, I 
have always said that I would undertake to 
live, and live perfectly well, keeping up 
weight, strength, and power to work on half 
the money — that is, six cents a day. So I 
shall put it to the test — an experiment quite 
as useful, I fancy, as walking a thousand 



Joseph Bodes Buchanan, M.D. 171 

miles in a thousand hours, or, as Gale is now 
trying to do, a thousand quarter miles in a 
thousand consecutive ten minutes. 

When I have finished my experiment you 
will have a full account of it in my Herald 
of Health ; meantime I wish you all possi- 
ble success in your useful and beneficent 

labors. 

Yery truly yours, 

T. L. Nichols, M.D. 

32 Fopstone Road, Earl's Court, ) 
London, S.W., Nov. 15, 1877. \ 



IY. 

JOSEPH RODES BUCHANAN, M.D. 

Dear Sir : Your letter, asking my per- 
sonal experience and suggestions in reference 
to hygiene, especially of the brain and nerves, 
has just been received, and, approving most 
heartily your valuable labors for the develop- 
ment of a higher manhood, I take pleasure 
in responding. 

I have some views of hygiene differing ma- 
terially from those which have been most 
current in this country, which it would 
require much more than a letter to express 



172 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

I know nothing more necessary to be im- 
pressed on every one than the importance of 
adapting the diet to the varying requirements 
of each constitution, and the varying condi- 
tions of the system from day to day. No uni- 
form system of diet can suit various constitu- 
tions of opposite organic development, and 
there are few persons who do not need fre- 
quent changes of diet to maintain perfect 
health. At one time salt is a necessity (es- 
pecially in hot weather); at another, a matter 
of indifference. At one time strong coffee 
may aid greatly in restoring a depressed nerv- 
ous system, and warding off malarious fevers; 
at another, it may greatly aggravate nerv- 
ous disorders, sleeplessness and neuralgia. A 
volume would be required to illustrate the 
necessity of varied diet; but, after all, a vig- 
ilant observation, by each individual, of the 
natural cravings of his own constitution, and 
the effects of each article of diet, is the 
only reliable guide. It was by this careful 
self-study that I relieved myself of severe dys- 
pepsia in early manhood, and have brought 
up a comparatively weak constitution to a 



Joseph Bodes Buchanan, Jf.D. 173 

very healthful and enjoyable condition, at the 
age of sixty-three. 

As for the hygiene of the brain, it de- 
pends chiefly on that of the body, and is 
included in the laws of diet, exercise, etc., 
but it has also its special culture and devel- 
opment. 

It may seem odd to those who regard the 
brain simply as the organ of intellectual power 
that I regard the affections as the chief subject 
of consideration in cerebral hygiene ; yet 
nothing is more certain in anthropology 
(which, as I present it, is a positive experi- 
mental science, and not a matter of literary 
speculation) than that the vitality and circu- 
lation of the brain are maintained, not by 
the intellectual powers, but by the emotions 
— not only the gentler emotions that seek the 
good of others, but the more heroic emotions 
which constitute impulses and volitionary pow- 
ers. 

The first requisite, therefore, to a sound, 
vigorous brain is a resolute will and ambition to 
succeed in some honorable career; the sec- 
ond is what has sometimes been called al- 
truism (in opposition to egotism) — the love 



174 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

of friends, the love of society, the love of 
woman, the love of universal humanity — in 
short, love in all its possible forms — not 
omitting the love of the divine and heaven- 
ly, which is the essence of religion, and the 
life and inspiration of the darkest hours that 
are surrounded by calamity and injustice. 

When these loves are all normally devel- 
oped, and cooperate with a strong will and 
heightened ambition, the brain has a fund of 
power that is inexhaustible, and the intellect 
is ever clear, copious and truthful. There is, 
therefore, no higher hygienic law for the brain 
than to love with our whole soul, and work 
with all our might in the direction that duty 
indicates. And, as love requires earthly ob- 
jects and sympathy, we need to seek the 
society of those whose earnest and loving 
natures render them worthy of our love, and 
whose intelligent companionship will strengthen 
our mental and moral power. He who 
has a dozen noble friends is well provided 
for the hygiene of the brain ; and it is the 
duty of those w T ho aim thus to live rightly 
and make the world better for their having 
lived in it, to seek each other's society, with- 



Joseph Bodes Buchanan, M.D. 175 

out reserve or hesitation, and to unite in 
groups, clubs or societies of any kind, in 
which by their moral power they may sus- 
tain each other, and react upon society for its 
good — so that social influence may emanate 
from the wise, the good, and progressive, 
and not merely from fashion, wealth, and the 
lower instincts of the multitude. 

When I know of such persons I seek them 
in a fraternal spirit, and when they approach 
me I welcome them with cordiality ; and if 
all students of nature and books who live not 
for self alone would follow these suggestions, 
there would soon be a social atmosphere about 
them in which there would be nothing mor- 
bid — in which the brain and soul might at- 
tain a higher development. Are there not 
everywhere materials enough in both sexes 
for such society if they were brought to- 
gether, and is it not the duty of every one 
who appreciates these suggestions to 6eek and 
to organize such society, for innumerable rea- 
sons ? 

Regarding the above as the major portion 
of cerebral hygiene, I would offer but four 
minor suggestions. 



176 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

1. Vocal Culture. — The exercise of the 
voice and mind in conversation and in addresses 
to our friends or the public is the most effi- 
cient exercise for strengthening the entire brain, 
for want of which many a solitary student 
loses half the enjoyment of life, and half his 
mental vigor. 

2. Balanced Culture. — As man's consti- 
tution consists of opposite powers, no great 
cultivation in any direction can produce sat- 
isfactory results, unless it be balanced by cul- 
ture in the opposite direction to give it a 
basis. Regular muscular exercise is therefore 
necessary to the student or man of intellect- 
ual pursuits, even to give the brain itself 
practical energy, and the exercise of the arms 
and shoulders is especially beneficial. 

3. Nourishment. — A nourishing diet, abund- 
ance of blood, and sufficiency of sleep, or rest 
in the horizontal posture, are necessary to a 
sound brain. Abstinence, poor food, indiges- 
tion, and loss of rest impair the tone of the 
brain and favor the development of melan- 
choly, irritability, and insanity. Rich blood 
nourishes the brain ; poor, watery blood 
absorbs and removes cerebral substance. The 



Joseph Rodes Buchanan, Jf.D. 177 

food should be varied to suit the individual 
constitution, but as a general rule animal food 
and alcoholic drinks are not favorable to the 
best condition of the brain, although in very 
cold weather they are less objectionable than 
in the warm or temperate. Whenever freely 
used, they diminish the relative power of the 
moral and intellectual portions of the brain. 
Their tendencies coincide so well, it is an 
inevitable inference that a diminished con- 
sumption of animal food would be followed 
by a diminished appetite for alcoholic liquids, 
and by an increased development in the 
masculine constitution of those qualities which 
render woman more temperate and refined 
than man. 

4. Secretion. — The brain is analogous in 
its vital caaracter to the glandular or secre- 
ting orgais, and sympathizes with all of 
them. Hence it is indispensable to a sound 
cerebral CDndition to maintain every secretion 
in healthy activity. This is indeed far more 
important than muscular exercise, and is to 
some extent a substitute for it. The secre- 
tions of lie skin, lungs, liver, kidneys and 
bowels ar3 all indespensable, and every inter- 



178 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

ruption should command immediate attention. 
Dr. James Johnson said he never felt so well 
prepared for intellectual effort as just after his 
liver had been roused by a cholagogue medicine. 

Much more might profitably be said, but I 
would conclude with this suggestion, that he 
who by the foregoing rules brings up his brain 
to its best condition will find it so active, so 
warm, and well supplied with blood, in every 
part, that he will be conscious of its action, 
and will be able to discover many of the 
functions of the different regions by the local 
sensations in the head — the sense of warmth, 
heat and tension where the organs &re active, 
the aching or tenderness where they are fa- 
tigued, the absence of any sensaiion where 
they are inactive, and the pain or tenderness 
where they have been subjected to painful 
mental impressions. 

Under a proper cerebral hygiene, there 

should be a consciousness of vita[ action, a 

gentle warmth, and slight tension ovsr the head 

generally, and especially in the superior regions. 

Very respectfully, 

Joseph Rodes Bichanan. 

Oct. 27, 1877. 



Gerrit Smith. 179 

Y. 

GERRIT SMITH. 

(Written by his Daughter.) 

Dear Sir : In compliance with your re- 
quest, I am happy to give a brief statement 
of my father's mode of life- 
He was a man of large frame, was six 
feet in height, and weighed, ordinarily, from one 
hundred and eighty-five to two hundred pounds. 
His constitution was wonderful — prolonging 
his life to the age of seventy-eight, in spite of 
excessive mental labor, sedentary habits, seri- 
ous local difficulties, requiring repeated surgi- 
cal operations, and, above all, an attack of 
dyspepsia, resulting in a temporary insanity of 
a most trying character. 

He generally rose about six o'clock, re- 
mained in his dressing-room until half-past 
seven, breakfasted at eight, eating sparingly 
of meat, but freely of fruit, cream, and Gra- 
ham-bread. For the last year or two he took 
a cup of tea at the close of the meal, but 
for more than twenty or thirty years of his 
life took neither tea nor coffee, and for a year 
or more he ate no meat. At dinner he was 



180 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

more fond of vegetables and dessert than of 
meat. He never touched the castors, and 
often said that he kept his " child's-palate," 
liking sweets, but disliking condiments. This 
peculiarity was often pretty severely tried dur- 
ing the long period (from ten to fifteen years) 
in which he scrupulously abstained from the 
products of slave labor. For the last year 
or two, yielding to the urgent wishes of his 
physician, he took a glass of Rhine-wine at 
dinner, using the only wine-glass in the house ! 
Tea was a very light repast, consisting, often, 
simply of a bit of bread and butter, and a 
cup of weak tea. 

He retired early, rarely being up later 
than ten o'clock. But in cases of emergency 
he waived this habit. When in Congress he 
voted on the Nebraska Bill, which came before 
the House in one of its night sessions. For 
several years after his father's death, when 
burdened with the care of an estate of seven 
hundred thousand acres, he would, occasionally, 
after working hard all day, remain at his 
desk until eleven o'clock at night. Every 
evening, after disposing of the mail, answer- 
ing letters and reading newspapers (he read 



Gerrit Smith. 181 

from sixty to seventy papers a week), he came 
to the parlor and spent an hour or more in 
delightful conversation on the news of the day, 
old friends, and scenes — amusing anecdotes 
coming in now and then with scraps of 
verse, little bits of pleasantry and lov- 
ing words for all of us. These charming 
moments flew by and sometimes overlapped 
the usual hour for retiring. Latterly, a few 
gentle gymnastic exercises, suggested by and 
always pleasantly recalling his friend Judge 
Conkling, closed the day. 

For a long period it was his habit to 
walk from two to three miles daily, going 
through a series of arm exercises; but of 
late years the walk seldom exceeded a mile 
and a half. He was rarely deterred by 
deep snows, mud, or heavy storms. For sev- 
eral years he rode daily on horseback, and 
continued this habit until he was over seventy. 

He was stricken with apoplexy Dec. 26, 
1877, and, two days later, passed away pain- 
lessly and unconsciously. 

With kind regards, your friend, 

Elizabeth S. Miller. 
Geneva, Dec. 7, 1877. 



182 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

VI. 

THOMAS WE^TWORTH HIGGINSOK 

Dear Sir : For answer to your letter I 
can say that I have been a busy worker with 
the brain all my life, and have enjoyed very 
unusual health. I am now fifty-three, and 
have not been confined to the house by ill- 
ness since I was seventeen, except for a short 
time during the war, when suffering from the 
results of a wound. This favorable result I 
attribute to (1) a good constitution and an 
elastic temperament; (2) simple tastes, disin- 
clining me to stimulants and narcotics, such 
as tea, coffee, wine, spirits and tobacco ; (3) 
a love of athletic exercises; (4) a lifelong 
habit of writing by daylight only; (5) the 
use of homoeopathic medicines in the early 
stages of slight ailments. 

I have never been a special devotee oi 
health, I think, but have followed out my 
natural tastes ; and have certainly enjoyed phys- 
ical life very much. It may be well to add 
that, though, as I said, my constitution was 
good and my frame always large, I had yet 



Thomas Wentworth Higginson. 183 

an unusual number of children's diseases, and 
have often been told that my life was sev- 
eral times preserved, in infancy, against all 
expectation, by the unwearied care and de- 
votion of my mother. This may encourage 
some anxious parents. 

Very truly yours, 

Thos.. Wentworth Higginson. 

jP. S. — In view of the present solicitude 
as to the decay of the original New England 
stock, it may be well to say that I am the 
descendant of several of the very oldest 
Puritan families, and that I can find no record 
or tradition of any ancestor who was physically 
as large as myself. I trust, however, that I 
shall not equal in longevity the Reverend 
John Higginson, one of these ancestors, who 
died in 1708, aged ninety-two. 

Newport, R. L, Nov. 11, 1877. 



184 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

til 

NORTON S. TOWNSHEND, M.D. 

My Dear Doctor : You ask for a state- 
ment of facts in my personal experience 
that have a bearing on the subject of Mental 
Hygiene. I shall cheerfully comply with your 
request, but I fear that the even tenor of my 
life will enable me to furnish but little that 
is worthy of your attention. Such experiences 
as I can recall will group themselves under 
the following heads : parentage, diet, labor, 
study, and faith, or philosophy. 

First. My parents descended from a vig- 
orous and healthy ancestry; both of them were 
considerably more than eighty years of age 
when they died. They were persons of some 
education, of temperate and industrious habits, 
and of robust health, almost to the close of 
life. From what I recollect of them, thev 
must have had the good fortune to be born 
before nerves came into fashion. The physi- 
cal and mental health which I have enjoyed 
is doubtless due to a good constitution in- 
herited, rather than to any special care of my 
own. 



Norton S. Townshend, M.I). 185 

Second. For more than sixty years I have 
been favored with almost unbroken health. I 
have had no experience of headache, tooth- 
ache, or of many other aches that are some- 
times supposed to be the unavoidable inherit- 
ance of humanity. I have always had a good 
appetite for plain food, and have always been 
able to make a comfortable meal of anything 
set before me, without stopping for a mo- 
ment to consider how my stomach would 
stand affected, and, except for an occasional 
sensation of hunger, I have had but little 
consciousness of having a stomach. For some 
time, while a student,**! used, as an experi- 
ment, a spare and mostly vegetable diet, and 
felt sure that the consequence was an increase 
of mental force. My abstemiousness was, how- 
ever, carried too far, and eventually I found 
my muscular strength diminished ; I became 
nervous and less able to study successfully: 
I was forced to the conclusion that the best 
physical condition is likely to be accompanied 
by the most desirable mental state. I have 
never used intoxicating liquors, or tobacco, or 
medicine enough to be sensible that my men- 



186 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

tal condition was to any appreciable degree 
affected. 

Third. In regard to employment and habits 
of labor, I have seen some variety. I have 
been by turns farmer, physician, and politi- 
cian, then farmer again, soldier, and college 
professor. I have sometimes labored like a 
ditcher, at other times have been as careful 
to avoid hard work as a congressman. The 
result of my experience is that a regular 
amount of muscular labor in the open air is 
conducive both to physical and mental health ; 
then the liver, the kidneys, and the skin, per- 
form their functions in the best manner, the 
blood contains less effete matter, the brain is 
best fed, and the mind is most active. A sed- 
entary life, however, never occasioned me any 
inconvenience, when I could regulate my food 
properly, by making it more simple and less 
abundant. ^ 

Fourth. My experience compels me to hold 
as an axiom, that mental labor is essential to 
mental health. Professional men are com- 
pelled to study by their avocations, and if 
in any way released from this necessity, after 
habits of mental labor have become established, 



Norton 8. Townshend, M.D. 187 

they will study from choice, and, consequently, 
in such cases, the mind long retains its vigor. 
There is an impression abroad that physical 
labor is hostile to thought ; that the working- 
man, and the farmer especially, must of neces- 
sity be unfitted for mental work. Doubtless 
it is true that, when physical labor is daily 
carried to the extent of extreme fatigue, so 
soon as the labors of the day are over, and 
the cravings of hunger are satisfied, the body 
will assert its need, of rest: sleep will take 
possession of the weary frame, mental labor 
is impossible, and this course continued the 
faculties will become atrophied from non use. 
But with the farmer this state of things is neither 
necessary, nor profitable ; he will always find 
it for his interest, not only intellectually, but 
pecuniarily, to take some time for writing or 
reading before the work for the day begins. 
This time may be longer or shorter according 
to the season of the year, but should always 
be enough to make a record of the events of 
the preceding day, or to, look up themes for 
that day's cogitations. Any farm, in addition 
to its business management, will afford abund- 
ant scope for study, before its natural history 



188 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

will be fully understood. A farmer may ask 
himself whether the soil he tills has been 
transported, or is chiefly formed from the rocks 
of the locality, and where the underlying 
rocks themselves belong in the geologic series, 
and what is their history. Before the geology 
and mineralogy of any farm is thoroughly 
understood, much of the earth's make-up will 
be mastered. The farmer may wish to know 
the plants that he finds about his home ; this 
will require the persevering study of botany, 
a delightful branch of science, and very profit- 
able for mental health and discipline ; or he 
may wish to know the animals about him, 
both wild and tame ; the birds, of which some 
are his best friends and some are not; the in- 
sects that flit or creep about are legion, but 
may all be known by persevering study. The 
time required for the systematic study of any 
branch of natural history need not be great; 
the real student will add a specimen to his 
cabinet of minerals, to his herbarium, or to 
his collection of insects, in the same time 
that it takes his self-indulgent neighbor to 
light his pipe. One would think a farmer 
could hardly fail to observe and note all the 



Norton S. Townshend, M.D. 189 

meteorologic changes in the region where he 
lives, of such vital interest to him is everything 
that pertains to climate. Then, in addition 
to these enticing fields for investigation, the 
farmer is invited to mental effort by the 
duties he owes to his family, to the state, 
and to humanity. To properly instruct his 
children, to vote intelligently, and to under- 
stand the many questions that affect society, he 
must study, as well as work ; and in doing 
this he will be likely to secure for himself 
the greatest of earthly blessings — a sound 
mind in a sound body. Do you say that such 
a life is impossible for a farmer ? Pardon me, 
I know that it is not ; what is needed to make 
such a farmer's life the rule, instead of the ex- 
ception, is to put our young men upon the 
right track, and to teach them how to make a 
fair beginning. 

Fifth. Finally, for the preservation of 
mental health, one needs some faith, or philoso- 
phy. The annoyances, disappointments, pains, 
and sorrows of life are innumerable ; even 
when not invited by our own misconduct they 
daily and hourly beset us. Amid all these, 
some faith, upon which the mind can rest ab- 



190 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

solutely, is essential ; though perhaps it matters 

less what the faith or philosophy may be 

than that it be held unfalteringly. Probably 

no faith, true or false, will greatly mitigate 

the intensity of our afflictions; but any faith, 

if firmly held, may serve as an anchor in 

a storm, and save the mind from drifting 

to total ruin. 

Truly yours, 

N. S. ToWNSHEND. 

Columbus, Nov. 5, 1877. 

VIII. 

EDWARD BALTZER. 

I have much pleasure in introducing to 
American readers one of the leading advo- 
cates of health reform in Germany, the Rev. 
Edward Baltzer, President of the German 
National Vegetarian Society, editor of the 
monthly journal of the society, and minister 
of a free religious association. From his re- 
tired home at Nordhausen, in the Harz 
mountains, he has for many years exerted a 
wide influence through his journal, and his 
published writings (some thirty volumes and 
pamphlets). He is now advanced in years, 



Edward Baltzer 191 

but continues his work with seemingly un- 
abated vigor. An invitation to contribute 
some items of his personal experience to this 
volume has elicited the following reply. 

M. L. H. 
[Translation.] 

Thanking you for sending me a copy of 
your book, the translation of Schlickeysen's 
"Fruit and Bread," which I shall not fail to 
notice in the Vereins Blatt (the journal 
of the Vegetarian Society), I willingly com- 
ply with your request to give you my experi- 
ence with reference to * the influence of veg- 
etarianism upon the brain, nervous system, 
etc. 

In the year 1848, while a member of the 

Prussian Assembly from my electoral dis- 
trict, I became involved in an insurrection 
and was dangerously wounded in the left side 
of my skull and body. For a month ice was 
kept upon my head, and I recovered, but 
with the loss of hearing in the left ear, in 
which, however, I experienced a constant 
roaring, and suffered also until recently from 
cold feet, difficulty of digestion, and headache, 
so that I was able to work and to attend to 



192 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

the duties of my calling only with difficulty 
and with frequent interruptions. 

All the efforts of physicians, the water cure 
and the most careful and moderate diet were 
of no avail. 

Sea bathing (in the Baltic), however, some- 
what improved my general health, but the 
above-mentioned difficulties continued and I 
suffered on through eighteen weary years. 
In 1866 I adopted a vegetarian diet, and in 
a very short time experienced a great im- 
provement. My digestion became good, my 
feet were no longer cold (I wear no stock- 
ings), and the chronic headache disappeared. 
For the first time in many years I experi- 
enced the delightful consciousness of health, 
with a correspondingly increased desire for 
work. 

I fell, since then, into the error of over- 
working, and suffered in consequence a cer- 
tain nervous excitability which was aggravated 
by the continued affection of the left ear, in 
which all acute sounds caused pain, so that 
I was obliged to forego the pleasures of so- 
cial intercourse and of music, which I had 
previously much enjoyed. In 1876 I had a 



Edward Baltzer. 193 

serious illness, from which I fully recovered, 
and am now also entirely free from the diffi- 
culty in my head. 

I have thus had a rich experience in the 
care of health, and have learned the injurious 
effects of tobacco, spirituous liquors and a 
carnivorous diet, and especially how they 
impair the nervous system and thereby the 

mind. 

The well - organized mind is indeed its 

own master, but the power of self-control is 
strengthened by a life in accordance with nat- 
oral law. Vegetarianism, rightly understood, 
is the true method, alike for the sound and 
the unsound, but as yet its teachings are heard 
only as the voice of the preacher in the wil- 
derness, yet blessed are the few who hear and 
practice it — that is, those who practice it in 
love and with the understanding. 

I take the liberty of sending you the cur- 
rent numbers of the Yereins Blatt, and will 
continue to send the future issues, and re- 
main 

Your obedient servant, 

Edwaed Baltzer, 
(Minister of the Free Religious Association.) 
Nordhausex, Nov. 0, 1877. 



194 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

IX. 

WM. LLOYD GARRISON. 

Dear Sir : Accept my thanks for your 
kindness in sending me several numbers of 
the Herald of Health, together with the 
two little tracts, entitled " The Health Habits 
of Young Men," and also one of aged men, 
in the persons of William Cullen Bryant and 
William Howitt ; all of which I have read 
with great interest. 

My case presents nothing worth record- 
ing. My habits have always been simple 
and regular, ^especially in regard to diet. 
Though not ranking myself among vegeta- 
rians, I care very little for animal food, and 
can dispense with it at any time without an 
effort. I have been a teetotaller for more than 
half a century, and have always abominated 
the use of tobacco in every form. I have 
not been addicted to taking regular exercise, 
have had no gymnastic experience, and un- 
doubtedly have been too sedentary in this 
respect, especially as the pressure upon my 
brain was so constant and severe during 
more than thirty years' conflict with the whole 



Wm. Lloyd Garrison — A. JS. Alcott. 195 

nation for the overthrow of the chattel 
slavery. I have generally used tea and coffee, 
not strong in quality, nor copious in quantity, 
but feel no " aching void " where they are 
not to be had, always being abundantly sat- 
isfied with a glass of pure cold water. I 
have ever deemed it a most fortunate thing 
that I attached myself to the temperance 
cause, almost at its inception. 
Respectfully yours, 

Wm. Lloyd Garrison. 
Roxbury, Jan. 30, 1878. 

X. 

A. BRONSON ALCOTT. 

Dear Sir : Half a century, mostly con- 
fined to fruit and bread diet, along with 
the dispositions and habits which the Chris- 
tian regimen promotes, has confirmed the 
truth and beauty of the doctrines set forth 
so ably in your translation of Schlickeysen's 
treatise entitled " Fruit and Bread : a Scien- 
tific Diet." It is a timely volume for the 
perusal of the general public, and especially 
for parents and reformers of all classes. Books 



196 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

like this, treating of the full table of human 
innerments, are particularly needed for in- 
structing our people in the best regimen for 
ensuring wholesome and vigorous habits of 
living and thinking. The whole community 
suffers beyond measure for the want of a 
finer scientific discrimination of the laws of 
vital as of spiritual chemistry, enabling us 
to tap the core of social and moral evils 
effectually. 

Tour promised papers on the hygiene 
for farmers and mechanics will, I hope, reach 
the far wider and not less hungering com- 
munity. 

You " wish to know how I have trained 
my brain to such fine thinking as my 
books display ? " I may best refer you to 
your translation of " Fruit and Bread " for 
the fullest reply to your question. 

Yet I may properly add, however, that 
a temperament inherited from a hardy and 
active ancestry doubtless favored the forma- 
tion of habits that have thus far given a 
charm to my days, and promise, if I am 
faithful to the end, a lengthened longevity 



A. Bronson Alcott. 197 

— to round out a full century of busy 
existence were not unworthy of one's human 
destiny. 

As to my accepted bill of fare, I may add, 
moreover, that fruits rank first and highest 
in the pyramid ; bread properly next ; and 
vegetables lowest, and last, at its base. The 
distilled juices are forbidden. Flesh, if en- 
tering but slightly, is to the fairest tempera- 
ments especially unfriendly, if not demoraliz- 
ing: The less of it the better; the more 
genially the body answers to the mind ; 
the more ideal, spiritual, nor the less prac- 
tical. Sobriety in all pleasures is the open 
way to the highest and purest satisfactions; 
the deepest, holiest, this life can give ; as 
it is likewise the sole gateway to future 
beatitude. 

You have my thanks for the gift of the 

book of "Fruit and Bread." 

Yery truly yours, 

A. Bronson Alcott. 
Concord, Oct. 18, 1877. 



198 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

XL 

S. O. GLEASON, M.D. 
A PLEA FOR HUNTING. 

Dear Sir: When about fifty years of age, 
I found myself worn out, so that I could walk 
but a short distance, or do but little mental 
work. This condition had been brought about 
by excess of both physical and mental labor. 
The muscular and nervous systems were both 
enfeebled, but there was no actual disease in 
either. Travel was tried with some benefit, 
but I did not get the best results of my 
time till I took to the fields and forests — gun 
in hand. I never hunted, and never owned 
a gun until I was past fifty. The experience, 
of course, was new and fresh. Such had been 
my intense activity that the factor of hunting 
just met my want. 

I studied the habits of birds and learned 
something of taxidermy — used all the skill I 
could master in my efforts to secure a shot, 
which often requires a great exercise of strat- 
egy; as every animal and every bird will 
escape if possible. I have hunted the birds 
of the west of California, of Florida, the wild 



S. O. Gleason, M.&. 199 

turkey of the cypress swamps, the deer in 
the pine woods, the partridge of our forests, 
the nimble squirrel, and the woodchuck 01 
meadow and upland. 

The eye is constantly under training, the 
ear also; every footprint of nature, every 
motion and sound must be caught and ana- 
lyzed. If a nut falls, if leaves rustle, or any 
unusual sound is heard, an immediate investi- 
gation must be had, and a quick decision made 
as to the cause. The gun must be kept in 
hand so as to be used with great celerity 
and precision ; as a few seconds may give or 
lose you a shot. 

Thus led by eye and ear, the muscles of 
the entire body are called into the most de- 
lightful activity, with the least possible effort 
of the will, nearly resembling the spontaneous 
movements of childhood. The muscles seem 
to obey the active senses with real delight, 
and with much less sense of fatigue than in 
any other mode of exercise. Then the very 
stillness of the forests and the purity of the 
air are refreshing. One leaves humanity and 
cities entirely out of mind, and drinks in life 
even in the sublime solitude of the grand old 



200 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

forests. The muscular system gains in strength, 
blood is sent to the extremities and to the 
surface, the skin becomes active, the brain is 
released of its excess of circulation, the ner- 
vous system is rested, the entire man refreshed 
and renewed. 

For the past ten years, hunting has been 
my chief source of recreation. The interest 
still is keen, the results are always delight- 
ful and refreshing. Many a magnificent old 
tree has become my friend, many a stream 
and glen my delight, and a multitude of ex- 
quisite pictures of natural scenery are treas- 
ured in my memory. Every season I spend 
weeks (with my gun in hand) in forest and 
field. I keep all my senses keen, and my 
mind active ; my nervous system is more 
quiet and restful ; I sleep better, and digest 
more, by reason of this mode of recreation. 

I intend to hunt as long as my eye can 
see, or my ear can hear, or my limbs trans- 
port me to forest and field. While cities ex- 
haust, nature is full of rest and repose. 

S. O. Gleason, MJD. 

Elmira Water Cure, ) 
Nov. 20, 1877. \ 



William K Dodge. 201 

XII. 

WILLIAM E. DODGE. 

Dear Sir: You ask me to give you my 
views as to the best method of promoting 
health and perpetuating life. 

You know my views as to temperance and 
I can only say that fifty years' experience 
and observation confirm the opinion that to- 
tal abstinence from the use of alcoholic drinks 
is best for the promotion of permanent health. 

Regular systematic employment, aided by 
out-door exercise, is a great preserver of health. 

A cheerful disposition, which trusts in 
God's kind providence, and discharges daily 
duty, leaving results in his hands, is another 
preventive influence. 

A regular hour for meals as far as possi- 
ble, and an early retirement for rest, and ris- 
ing generally with the sun, are also to be 
recommended. 

Every man, by careful watching, learns 
what kinds of food do not agree with him, 
and are not easily digested ; and, if he desires 
good health, must avoid them. 

Never allow a day to pass without a 



202 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

regular discharge from the bowels, and have 
some regular hour for this duty and the 
system will respond to it. No one can have 
permanent good health who neglects this. 

Watch against colds by keeping out of 
drafts, and never allow a cold or cough to 
continue without prompt attention. 

Be careful to keep the feet dry and warm 
and the head cool. 

Above all, have the great work for eter- 
nity done and settled by repentance^ faith, 
and trust in Jesus Christ, so that the mind 
may be at rest and not constantly anxious 
about death and its consequences. 

The following, which I cut from a paper, 
has been repeated hundreds of times, and 
has been of great comfort to me, and is a 
good receipt for long life and health. 

"Make a firm-built fence of trust. 

All around to-day, 
Fill it in with useful work, 

And within it stay. 
Look not through the sheltering bars, 

Anxious for the morrow, 
God will help, whatever comes, 

Be it joy or sorrow.' 1 '' 

Respectfully yours, 

W. E. Dodge. 
New York, Oct. 21, 1877. 



Henry Hyde Lee. 203 

XIII. 
HENRY HYDE LEE. 

Dear Sir : You ask me to make a few 
suggestions, giving my views of the proper 
hygiene for the brain and nerves, from the 
standpoint of a business man. 

Let me premise that business men, espe- 
cially merchants, are subject to many trials 
which more or less affect the nervous sys- 
tem. There is the constant strain to keep 
watch of the many causes which determine 
the fluctuations in value of goods, and to be 
instantly ready for any future possibilities of 
advantage or disaster. We are often tempted 
to deal in grain or stocks in a way that is 
little better than gambling. Some of us, in 
our excitement, go on without rule or sys- 
tem, until nothing but confusion results. 
Sometimes this excitement becomes a step- 
ping-stone to a dash into politics, which is 
pretty nearly fatal to the merchant's proper 
work. Worse than all these things is the 
habit which some have of carrying their busi- 
ness with them to their homes, and even to 
their beds, on which they lie awake in the 



204 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

attempt to solve some knotty problem ; others, 
when overworked, take stimulants, instead of 
taking rest — the thing which nature dictates. 
All these things imperil the nervous system, 
and in the end cause physiological bank- 
ruptcy. 

As to suggestions, I may say I have learned 
that regular sleep, or a good measure of it, is 
most important for a healthy, active brain. If 
from any unusual strain or complication of 
business, you cannot sleep, do not resort to 
drugs, but remain quiet at home ; you can take 
a drive in the country, but keep away from 
excitements. 

Next to sleep, eat well and regularly; 
but let your diet be plain and wholesome, 
and such as suits the appetite. Do not eat 
between meals, or late at night. I have 
learned that a large drink of water, taken 
just before going to bed, helps one to sleep, 
opens the pores, and throws off a slight cold. 
It also promotes health. It is important that 
a business man have simple tastes and good 
habits; therefore, avoid alcoholic drinks — cof- 
fee and tea are quite stimulating enough. 

If you are able, have a good pair of 



Dio Zewis, M.D. 205 

horses, and drive them yourself. It affords a 
healthy and pleasant excitement, especially if 
they have mettle, and are high steppers. 

Keep a good gun and fishing tackle, and 
use them occasionally. Good manly recrea- 
tion helps one to think clearly. The con- 
stant labor in the counting-house is very 
wearying, and sensible recreations make it 
more easily borne. 

Avoid worry, excitement, and bores, and, 

in short, eat well, sleep well, and pay as 

you go. 

Very truly, 

Henry Hyde Lee. 
Indianapolis, Ind., Dec, 1877. 



XIV. 

DIO LEWIS, M.D. 

To Dio Lewis Holbrook — My Dear JVame- 
sake : I trust you will never learn to use 
tobacco. It is doing more to destroy the 
brains and nerves of American boys than any 
other agency that can be named. 

Within half a century no young man ad- 
dicted to the use of tobacco has graduated 



206 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

at the head of his class in Harvard College, 
though five out of six of the students have 
used it. The chances, you see, were five in 
six that a smoker or chewer would gradu- 
ate at the head of his class, if tobacco does 
no harm. But during half a century not one 
victim of tobacco was able to come out 
ahead. 

If a man wishes to train for a boat-race, 
his trainer will not let him use tobacco, be- 
cause it weakens his brain and muscles so 
that he can't win. 

If a young man wishes to train for a long 
walk — say a hundred miles in twenty-four 
hours — his trainer will not let him touch a 
cigar, because he knows that the young chap 
will not be able to hold out in such a long 
walk. 

If a young fellow would prepare to play 
a fine game of billiards, while he is training 
for the tournament his trainer will not let him 
touch tobacco. 

And, as you see from the experience m 
Harvard College, if a man will train him- 
self to graduate from a college with honor, 
he must not use tobacco. 



Frederic JBeecher Perkins. 207 

It is a powerful poison, and the brain 
cannot escape if it be used in any form. 

My dear namesake, I can hardly imagine 
any other news from you which would hurt 
my feelings so much as to hear that you 
had begun to smoke cirgarettes. 

With most affectionate solicitude for your 
welfare, I am your namesake, 

Dio Lewis. 
Oakland, Cal., Dec. 6, 1877. 



XT. 

FREDERIC BEECHER PERKINS. 

My Dear Doctor : Whatever I can say 
in response to your request may as well be 
in the form of a letter to you, I suppose, 
as in any other? At any rate, I will put 
it so; and you are hereby authorized to doc- 
tor it into any shape that will suit you 
better, and to throw it away if you prefer 
that. 

First of all, so far as my experience and 
observation go, I should say that the one 
most general rule for mental hygiene is, 
Keep the body healthy. Nothing is more ab- 



208 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

solutely proved, I imagine (so far as any- 
thing can be proved in physiology), than that 
insanity is the effect of a disorder in the mech- 
anism through which the mind acts, not a 
disorder in the mind itself. And this state- 
ment I take to be valid, whether the mind 
is admitted to exist separately from the body 
or not. Accordingly, it follows that the more 
perfect all the physical conditions, the bet- 
ter will be the mental products delivered 
through them. 

Second. Next under this one general 
rule may perhaps come a limitation of it. 
For the best mental results, the brain ac- 
tivity must have the other activities subor- 
dinated to it. No student, for instance, at a 
manual labor school, who does full days' works 
at carpentering or farming, can also do full 
days' works at learning. And, conversely, if 
he does full days' works in the study, he can't 
also do them in manual work. A man can do 
one work, and other things enough for exer- 
cise and amusement. But no one man can do 
two works. Christ stated the principle over 
eighteen hundred years ago (Matt, vi, 24). 
and, like his whole moral code, it is true now, 



Frederic Beecher Perkins. 209 

as it was then. A man may abuse himself 
for a time, and seem to be doing two works, 
but he will soon come to the end of this sort 
of living on his capital. 

Third. Where brain activity is the lead- 
ing object, the rule for the rest of life is, mode- 
rate, agreeable exercise, but not fatigue. Eat 
lightly, rather than fully ; exercise in the open 
air — don't work in the open air. Play at 
games or music — don't work at them. Be con- 
tented to do your best at some one thing. 
Few enough are they who can do any great 
things in one line, even ; and we know what 
Mr. Jack-at-all-trades was master of. 

Fourth. At whatever part of the day 
the greatest mental effort is to be made, the 
rest of the body should at that time be fresh, 
and free from need of exertion. It would 
be absurd — physically absurd, I mean, not 
merely ridiculous — for a man to attempt to 
deliver an impassioned speech and dance 
a hornpipe at the same time. It would 
be just as absurd, although it would not look 
as funny, for a man to undertake at the same 
time to digest a full meal and to think out 
an important subject. In like manner, it 



210 jPhysical and Intellectual Habits. 

would be absurd for a man who has an im- 
portant speech to make in the evening to 
exhaust himself by doing a full day's work 
at morning. 

Fifth. The best part of the day for brain 
work is usually the latter half of the forenoon. 
The strength gained by the night's rest is 
not expended ; the vitality is no longer 
called upon to enable the stomach to deal 
with breakfast, and the strength of that 
meal is also distributed into the system ; 
and the day's life is all on hand to be lived. 
It may be added that a good forenoon's 
brain work is as much as any writer ought 
to do, if he has to think out his writing. 

Sixth. This supposed breakfast should be 
light, rather than heavy. If a full meal is 
to be enjoyed, it should be when there is 
time enough left for digestion before going 
to bed, and when the day's work is over, so 
that the brain need not be put to service 
during digestion. 

Lastly. Few people can live exactly by 
their rules, and most people who are able 
and willing to work have to work too hard. 
For most people, then, my code must come 



Samuel A. Foot, ZZ.D. 211 

down to a jpretty generalized statement : To 
use your brain to the best advantage, use 
it most before dinner and before supper: 
eat lightly rather than heavily; keep good- 
natured and keep well. 

Frederic Beecher Perkiks. 
Boston Public Library, Nov. 1, 1877. 

XV. 

JUDGE SAMUEL A. FOOT, LL.D. 

Dear Sir : Your letter of the 20th inst. 
has been received and read with interest. 
Your proposed publication appears to me 
highly meritorious, and I am willing to aid 
you as far as I am able. You will see by an 
address I lately delivered in my native town 
in Connecticut, and which I send you by 
mail to-day, my age and present state of 
preservation. [We see by this address that 
Judge Foot is 88 years of age, and in good 
health.] 

There are a few facts in regard to my 
habits of life which may be useful to you. 

When in my sophomore year at college, 
I read Dr. Franklin's experiments in regard 



212 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

to sleep, and his conclusion that six hours 
was all which a person of studious and sed- 
entary course of life required ; and as I ex- 
pected practice of law would be my pursuit, 
I determined to adopt six hours as my por- 
tion of time for sleep each twenty-four hours. 
I took measures to fix that habit upon me, 
and succeeded, and it has continued through 
life. 

While at college, like most foolish youth, 
I learned to use tobacco, and used it freely 
until I was twenty-five years of age. I then 
became satisfied that it was injuring me, and, 
after a severe struggle with the desire for it, 
was able to give it up, and have never used 
it since, and have a horror of it. 

In the early part of my professional life, 
I incurred the habit of setting up late, some- 
times till one or two o'clock in the morning. 
Finding this was not judicious, I changed to 
the opposite extreme, and rose at four o'clock 
in the morning. As this injured my eyes, I 
abandoned it, and determined to rise and retire 
at reasonable hours, and from that time — 
which was when I was about thirty years of 
age — I have risen at half-past five from the 



Mark Hopkins. 213 

middle of April to the middle of September, 

and at six the rest of the year, and laid away 

my papers and books at ten o'clock, and re- 

tired to rest from half-past ten to eleven. My 

diet has been general, neither food nor drink 

confined to any particular article, except about 

the time I abandoned the use of tobacco I 

also gave up the use of all intoxicating 

liquors. In a word, my rule of life has been 

the golden one of being " temperate in all 

things," in labor, rest, exercise, drink and 

diet* 

Yery truly yours, 

Samuel A. Foot. 
Geneva, Dec. 27, 1877. 

XVII. 

MARK HOPKINS. 

Dear Sir: I do not regard the life of a 
student as unfavorable to health. As a student 
the one danger is that he will overtax the 
brain. The danger that men will do this is 
increased if they are not only students but 
public speakers. There then come times of 
pressure when the temptation to excessive 
work is great. 



214 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

As I have usually spoken from slight notes, 

time for writing has not been indispensable, 

and my habit has been to study till my head 

began to feel heavy, and then stop. Under 

the greatest pressure, I have rarely studied 

after ten o'clock, and have never resorted to 

narcotic or alcoholic stimulants to enable me 

to work longer. Of course, the general health 

must be cared for; but for the health of the 

brain I should prescribe but two things : first, 

negatively, abstinence from artificial stimulants ; 

and, second, plenty of sleep. 

Truly yours, 

Mark Hopkins. 
Williams College, ) 
Feb. 7, 1878. J 

XVIIL 

WILLIAM CULLED BRYANT. 

To Joseph H. Richards, Esq. — Dear Sir: 
I promised, some time since, to give you some 
account of my habits of life, so far, at least, 
as regards diet, exercise, and occupation. I 
am not sure that it will be of any use to you, 
although the system which I have for many 
years observed seems to answer my purpose 



William Cullen Bryant. 215 

very well. I have reached a pretty advanced 
period of life, without the usual infirmities of old 
age, and with my strength, activity, and bodily 
faculties generally in pretty good preservation. 
How far this may be the effect of my way of 
life, adopted long ago, and steadily adhered to, 
is perhaps uncertain. 

I rise early, at this time of tne year about 
5^ ; in summer, half an hour, or even an hour, 
earlier. Immediately, with very little encum- 
brance of clothing, I begin a series of exer- 
cises, for the most part designed to expand 
the chest, and at the same time call into ac- 
tion all the muscles and articulations of the 
body. These are performed with dumb-bells, 
the very lightest, covered with flannel; with a 
pole, a horizontal bar, and a light chair swung 
around my head. After a full hour, and some- 
times more, passed in this manner, 1 bathe 
from head to foot. When at my place in the 
country, I sometimes shorten my exercises in 
the chamber, and, going out, occupy myseli 
for half an hour or more in some work 
which requires brisk exercise. After my bath, 
if breakfast be not ready, 1 sit down to my 
studies until I am called. 



216 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

My breakfast is a simple one — hominy and 
milk, or, in place of hominy, brown bread, or 
oat-meal, or wheaten grits, and, in the season, 
baked sweet apples. Buckwheat cakes I do not 
decline, nor any other article of vegetable 
food, but animal food I never take at break- 
fast. Tea and coffee I never touch at any 
time. Sometimes I take a cup of chocolate, 
which has no narcotic effect, and agrees with 
me very well. At breakfast I often take 
fruit, either in its natural state or freshly 
stewed. 

After breakfast I occupy myself for awhile 
with my studies, and then, when in town, I 
walk down to the office of The Evening Post, 
nearly three miles distant, and, after about 
three hours, return, always walking, whatever 
be the weather or the state of the streets. 
In the country I am engaged in my literary 
tasks till a feeling of weariness drives me out 
into the open air, and I go upon my farm 
or into the garden and prune the trees, or 
perform some other w T ork about them which 
they need, and then go back to my books. 
I do not often drive out, preierring to walk. 

In the country I dine early, and it is only 



William Cullen Bryant. 217 

at that meal that I take either meat or fish, 
and of these but a moderate quantity, making 
my dinner mostly of vegetables. At the meal 
which is called "tea," I take only a little 
bread and butter, with fruit, if it be on the 
table. In town, where I dine later, I make 
but two meals a day. Fruit makes a consid- 
erable part of my diet, and I eat it at almost 
any part of the day without inconvenience. My 
drink is water, yet I sometimes, though rarely, 
take a glass of wine. I am a natural Tem- 
perance man, finding myself rather confused 
than exhilarated by wine. I never meddle 
with tobacco, except to quarrel with its use. 

That I may rise early, I, of course, go to 
bed early : in town, as early as ten ; in the 
country, somewhat earlier. For many years I 
have avoided in the evening every kind of 
literary occupation which tasks the faculties, 
such as composition, even to the writing ot 
letters, for the reason that it excites the ner- 
vous system and prevents sound sleep. 

My brother told me, not long since, that 
he had seen in a Chicago newspaper, and 
several other Western journals, a paragraph 
in which it is said that I am in the habit of 



218 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

taking quinine as a stimulant ; that I have de- 
pended upon the excitement it produces in 
writing my verses, and that in consequence of 
using it in that way I had become as deaf as 
a post. As to my deafness, you know that 
to be false, and the rest of the story is 
equally so. I abominate all drugs and narcotics, 
and have always carefully avoided everything 
which spurs nature to exertions which it would 
not otherwise make. Even with my food I 
do not take the usual condiments, such as pep- 
per, and the like. 

I am, sir, truly yours, 

W. C. Bryant. 

New York, March 30, 1871. 

Dear Sir : You are welcome to make 
what use you think proper of my letter to 
Mr. Richards. I continue to pursue the same 
course of life as when that letter was writ- 
ten — only I have added to my daily exercise 
whenever circumstances will permit half an 
hour of brisk motion of the arms, in various 
directions, without any implement, but in such 
a manner as to open the chest, and favor 



William Howiti. 219 

an erect attitude. This is perhaps a trifle, 

but I have thought it worth mention. 

Tours respectfully, 

W. C. Bryant. 

Dr. M. L. Holbrook. 

Roslyn, Long Island, N". Y., ) 
November 3, 1877. f 



XIX. 

WILLIAM HOWITT. 

Dr. M. L. Holbrook — My Dear Sir: I 

am in receipt of your letter of April 27, 
which my elder daughter, Mrs. Alfred Watts, 
the author of the "Art Student in Munich," 
has forwarded me from London. I have read 
with very great pleasure the letter of Mr. 
Bryant, the poet, as given in your journal, and 
I congratulate you on obtaining the conclusive 
evidence of so distinguished a man ; and, also, 
in having established such a journal as 
The Herald of Health, for no subject in this 
fast-living and fast-thinking age is of more 
importance than that of laying the foundations 
of a sound constitution in youth, and of pre- 
serving that constitution through life by at- 
tention to the laws and dictates of Nature. 



220 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

This is an indispensable care, if we mean to 
pass our time here in comfort and in the full 
vigor of our intellects, and, I may add, of 
healthy moral sentiments. 

I shall, therefore, jot down with much sat- 
isfaction such circumstances and habits of my 
life as I believe to have mainly contributed to 
these results. And, in the first place, let me 
observe that while the modes of my own life 
and those of Mr. Bryant very much accord, in 
a few particulars they differ, as, I suppose, 
must be the case in almost any two individ- 
uals. Mr. Bryant never takes coffee or tea. 
I regularly take both, find the greatest re- 
freshment in both, and never experienced any 
deleterious effects from either, except in one 
instance, when, by mistake, I took a cup of 
tea strong enough for ten men. On the con- 
trary, tea is to me a wonderful refresher and 
reviver. After long-continued exertion, as in 
the great pedestrian journeys that I formerly 
made, tea would always, in a manner almost 
miraculous, banish all my fatigue, and diffuse 
through my whole frame comfort and exhila- 
ration, without any subsequent evil effect. 

I am quite well aware that this is not the 



William HowitL 221 

experience of many others, my wife among 
the number, on whose nervous system tea acts 
mischievously, producing inordinate wakeful- 
ness, and, its continued use, indigestion. But 
this is one of the things that people should 
learn, and act upon, namely, to take such 
things as suit them, and avoid such as do 
not. It is said that Mithridates could live 
and flourish on poisons, and, if it be true that 
tea or coffee is a poison, so do most of us. 
William Hutton, the shrewd and humorous 
author of the histories of Birmingham and 
Derby, and also a life of himself, scarcely in- 
ferior to that of Franklin in lessons of life- 
wisdom, said that he had been told that coffee 
was a slow poison, and, he added, that he 
had found it very slow, for he had drunk it 
more than sixty years without any ill effect. 
My experience of it has been the same. 

Mr. Bryant also has recourse to the use of 
dumb-bells, and other gymnastic appliances. 
For my part, I find no artificial practices neces- 
sary for the maintenance of health and a vig- 
orous circulation of the blood. My only gym- 
nastics have been those of Nature — walking, 
riding, working in the field and garden, bath- 



222 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

ing, swimming, etc. In some of those practices, 
or in the amount of their use, Nature, in 
my later years, has dictated an abatement. In 
Mr. Bryant's abhorrence of tobacco I fully 
sympathize. That is a poisoner, a stupefler, 
a traitor to the nervous system, and, conse- 
quently, to energy and the spirit of enter- 
prise ; so I renounced it once and forever 
before I reached my twentieth year. 

The main causes of the vigor of my con- 
stitution and the retention of sound health, 
comfort, and activity, to within three years of 
eighty, I shall point out as I proceed. 
First and foremost, it was my good fortune 
to derive my existence from parents descended 
on both sides from a vigorous stock, and of 
great longevity. I remember my great-grand- 
mother, an old lady of nearly ninety; my 
grandmother, of nearly as great an age. My 
mother lived to eighty-five, and my father to 
the same age. They were both of them tem- 
perate in their habits, living a fresh and 
healthy country life, and in enjoyment of 
that tranquillity of mind which is conferred 
by a spirit of genuine piety, and which con- 
fers, in return, health and strength. 



William Howitt. 223 

The great destroyers of life are not labor 
and exertion, either physical or intellectual, 
but care, misery, crime, and dissipation. My 
wife derived from her parentage similar ad- 
vantages, and all the habits of our lives, 
both before and since our marriage, have 
been of a similar character. By-the-by, though 
this has nothing to do with health, I may 
remark that your correspondent says my wife 
dresses like a Friend. It is a mistake. She 
dresses as any other lady of her years who 
is simple and unostentatious in her tastes. 

My boyhood and youth were, for the 
most part, spent in the country; and all 
country objects, sports, and labors, horse-racing 
and hunting excepted, have had a never-failing 
charm for me. As a boy, I ranged the 
country far and wide in curious quest and 
study of all the wild creatures of the woods 
and fields, in great delight in birds and their 
nests, climbing the loftiest trees, rocks and 
buildings in pursuit of them. In fact, the life 
described in the "Boy's Country Book" was 
my own life. No hours were too early for 
me, and in the bright, sunny fields in the 
early mornings, amid dews and odor of flowers, 



224 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

I breathed that pure air which gave a life- 
long tone to my lungs that I still reap the 
benefit of. All those daily habits of climb- 
ing, running, and working developed my frame 
to perfection, and gave a vigor to nerve and 
muscle that have stood well the wear and 
tear of existence. My brain was not dwarfed 
by excessive study in early boyhood, as is 
too much the case with children of to-day. 
Nature says, as plainly as she can speak, that 
the infancy of all creatures is sacred to play, 
to physical action, and the joyousness of mind 
that give life to every organ of the system. 
Lambs, kittens, kids, foals, even young pigs 
and donkeys, all teach the great lesson of 
Nature, that to have a body healthy and 
strong, the prompt and efficient vehicle of the 
mind, we must not infringe on her ordinations 
by our study and cramping sedentariness in 
life's tender years. "We must not throw away 
or misappropriate her forces destined to the 
corporeal architecture of man, by tasks that 
belong properly to an after-time. There is no 
mistake so fatal to the proper development of 
man and woman as to pile on the immature 
brain, and on the vet unfinished fabric of the 



William Howitt. 225 

human body, a weight of premature, and, 
therefore, unnatural study. In most of those 
cases where Nature has intended to produce 
a first-class intellect, she has guarded her em- 
bryo genius by a stubborn slowness of devel- 
opment. Moderate study and plenty of play 
and exercise in early youth are the true re- 
quisites for a noble growth of intellectual 
powers in man, and for its continuance to 
old age. 

My youth, as my boyhood, was spent in 
the country, and in the active exercise of its 
sports and labors. I was fond of shooting, 
fishing, riding, and walking, often making long 
expeditions on foot for botanical or other pur- 
poses. Bathing and swimming I continued 
each year till the frost was in the ground and 
the ice fringed the banks of the river. As 
my father farmed his own land, I delighted 
in all the occupations of the field, mowing 
and reaping with the men through the har- 
vest, looking after sheep and lambs, and find- 
ing never-ceasing pleasure in the cultivation of 
the garden. 

When our literary engagements drew lis 
to London, we carefully avoided living in the 



226 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

great Babel, but took up our residence in 
one of its healthy suburbs, and, on the in- 
troduction of railways, removed to what was 
actual country. A very little time showed us 
the exhausting and unwholesome nature of 
city life. Late hours, heavy dinners, the in- 
dulgence of what are called jovial hours, and 
crowded parties, would soon have sent us 
whither they have sent so many of our liter- 
ary contemporaries, long, long ago. After an 
evening spent in one of the crowded parties 
of London, I have always found myself liter- 
erally poisoned. My whole nervous system 
has been distressed and vitiated. I have been 
miserable and incapable the next day of in- 
tellectual labor. Nor is there any mystery 
about this matter. To pass some four or five 
hours in a town, itself badly ventilated, amid 
a throng of people, just come from dinner, 
loaded with a medley of viands, and reeking 
with the fumes of hot wines — no few of them, 
probably, of very moral habits— -was simply 
undergoing a process of asphyxia. The air 
w T as speedily decomposed by so many lungs. 
Its ozone and oxygen were rapidly absorbed, 
and in return the atmosphere was loaded 



William Bowitt. 227 

with carbonic acid, carbon, nitrogen, and other 
effluvia, from the lungs and pores of the 
dense and heated company; this mischievous 
, matter being much increased from the pro- 
ducts of the combustion of numerous lamps, 
candles, and gas-jets. 

The same effect was uniformly produced 
on me by evenings passed in theaters, or 
crowded concert or lecture-rooms. These facts 
are now well understood by those who have 
studied the causes of health and disease in mod- 
ern society; and I am assured by medical 
men that no source of consumption is so 
great as that occasioned by the breathing of 
these lethal atmospheres of fashionable parties, 
fashionable theaters, and concert and lecture 
halls; and then returning home at midnight 
by an abrupt plunge from their heat into damp 
and cold. People have said to me, " Oh, it is 
merely the effect of the unusual late hour that 
you have felt!" But, though late hours, 
either in writing or society, have not been 
my habit, when circumstances of literary pres- 
sure have compelled me occasionally to work 
late, I have never felt any such effects. I 
could rise the next day a little later, per- 



228 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

fectly refreshed and full of spirit for my 
work. 

Another cause to which I attribute uiy 
extraordinary degree of health has been, not 
merely continued country exercise in walking 
and gardening, but, now and then, making a 
clean breach and change of my location and 
mode of life. Travel is one of the great in- 
vigorators of the system, both physically and 
intellectually. When I have found a morbid 
condition stealing over me, I have at once 
started off on a pedestrian or other journey. 
The change of place, scene, atmosphere, of all 
the objects occupying the daily attention, has 
at once put to flight the enemy. It has 
vanished as by a spell. There is nothing like 
a throwing off the harness and giving mind 
and body a holiday — a treat to all sorts of 
new objects. Once, a wretched, nervous feel- 
ing grew upon me ; I flung it off by mounting 
a stage-coach, and then taking a walk from 
the Land's End, in Cornwall, to the north 
of Devon. It was gone forever ! Another 
time, the " jolly " late dinners and blithely-cir- 
culating decanter, with literary men that I found 
it almost impossible to avoid altogether without 



William Ilowitt. 229 

cutting my valuable connections, gave me a 
dreadful dyspepsia. I became livingly sensi- 
ble of the agonies of Prometheus with the 
daily vultures gnawing at his vitals. At once 
I started with all my family for a year's so- 
journ in Germany, which, in fact, proved three 
years. But the fiend had left me the very 
first day. The moment I quitted the British 
shore, the tormentor quitted me. I suppose he 
preferred staying behind, where he was aware 
of so many promising subjects of his diabolical 
art. New diet, new and early hours, and all 
the novelties of foreign life, made his approach 
to me impossible. I have known him no 
more, during these now thirty years. 

Eighteen years ago I made the circumnavi- 
gation of the globe, going out to Australia 
by the Cape of Good Hope, and returning 
by Cape Horn. This, including two years 
of wandering in the woods and wilds of 
Australia, evidently gave a new accession ot 
vital stamina to my frame. It is said that 
the climate of Australia makes young men 
old, and old men young. I do not believe 
the first part of the proverb, but I am quite 
certain that there is a great deal in the sec- 



230 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

ond part of it. During those two years I 

chiefly lived in a tent, and led a quiet, free, 
and pleasant life in the open forests and 
wild country, continually shifting our scene 
as we took the fancy, now encamping in 
some valley among the mountains, now by 
some pleasant lake or river. In fact, pic- 
nicing from day to day, and month to month, 
watching, I and my two sons, with every 
new interest, all the varied life of beasts, 
birds, and insects, and the equally varied 
world of trees, shrubs, and flowers. My 
mind was lying fallow, as it regarded my 
usual literary pursuits, but actually engaged 
with a thousand things of novel interest, 
both among men in the Gold Diggings, and 
among other creatures and phenomena around 
me. In this climate I and my little party 
enjoyed, on the whole, excellent health, 
though we often walked or worked for clays 
and weeks under a sun frequently, at noon, 
reaching from one hundred to one hundred 
and fifty degrees of Fahrenheit ; waded through 
rivers breast high, because there were no 
bridges, and slept occasionally under the for- 
est trees. There, at nearly sixty years of 



William Howitt. 231 

age, I dug for gold for weeks together, and 
my little company discovered a fine gold 
field, which continues one to this day. These 
two years of bush life, with other journeys 
on the Australian Continent, and in Tasma- 
nia, and the voyages out and back, gave a 
world of new vigor that has been serving 
me ever since. During the last summer in 
Switzerland, Mrs. Howitt and myself, at the 
respective ages of sixty-eight and seventy-six, 
climbed mountains of from three to five 
thousand feet above the level of the sea, 
and descended the same day with more ease 
than many a young person of the modern 
school could do. 

As to our daily mode of life little need 
be said. We keep early hours, prefer to dine 
at noon, are always employed in "books, or 
work, or healthful play ;" have no particular 
rules about eating and drinking, except the 
general ones of having simple and good food, 
and drinking little wine. We have always 
been Temperance people, but never pledged, 
being averse to thraldom of any kind, taking, 
both in food and drink, what seemed to do 
us good. At home, we drink, for the most 



232 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

part, water, with a glass of wine occasionally. 
On the Continent, we take the light wines 
of the country where we happen to be, with 
water, because they suit us; if they did not, 
we should eschew them. In fact, our great 
rule is to use what proves salutary, without 
regard to any theories, conceits, or specula- 
tions of hygienic economy ; and, in our case, 
this following of common sense has answered 
extremely well. 

At the same time, it is true that many 
eminent men, and especially eminent lawyers, 
who, in their early days, worked immensely 
hard, studied through many long nights, and 
caroused, some of them, deeply through oth- 
ers, yet attained to a good old age, as 
Lords Eldon, Scott, Brougham, Campbell, 
Lyndhurst, and others. To what are we to 
attribute this longevity under the circum- 
stances? No doubt to iron constitutions de- 
rived from their parentage, and then to the 
recuperative effect of those half-yearly flights 
into the Egypt of the country, which make 
an essential part of English life. To a thor- 
ough change of hours, habits, and atmosphere 
in these seasons of villeggiatura. To vigor- 



William Howitt. 233 

ous atheletic country sports and practices, 
hunting, shooting, fishing, riding, boating, 
yachting, traversing moors and mountains 
after black-cock, grouse, salmon, trout, and 
deer. To long walks at sea-side resorts, and 
to that love of continental travel so strong 
in both your countrymen and women, and ours. 
These are the saving causes in the lives 
of such men. Who knows how long they 
would have lived had they not inflicted on 
themselves, more or less, the destroying ones. 
There is an old story among us of two very 
old men being brought up on a trial where 
the evidence of the " oldest inhabitant " was 
required. The Judge asked the first who 
came up what had been the habits of his 
life. He replied, " Yery regular, my lord ; 
I have always been sober, and kept good 
hours." Upon which the Judge dilated in 
high terms of praise on the benefit of regular 
life. "When the second old man appeared, the 
Judge put the same question, and received the 
answer, " Yery regular, my lord ; I have never 
gone to bed sober these forty years. " Where- 
upon his lordship exclaimed, "Ha! I see how 



234 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

it is. English men, like English oak, wet or 
dry, last for ever." 

I am not of his lordship's opinion ; but 
seeing the great longevity of many of our 
most eminent lawyers, and some of whom in 
early life seemed disposed to live fast rather 
than long, I am more than ever confirmed in 
my opinion of the vitalizing influences of tem- 
perance, good air, and daily activity, which, 
with the benefits of change and travel, can so 
far in after life save those whom no original 
force of constitution could have saved from 
the effects of jollity, or of gigantic efforts of 
study in early life. For one of such hard 
livers, or hard brain-workers who have escaped 
by the periodical resort to healthful usage, 
how many thousands have been "cut off in 
the midst of their days ? " 

A lady once meeting me in Highgate, 
where I then lived, asked me if I could 
recommend to her a good doctor. I told her 
that I could recommend her three doctors. She 
observed that one would be enough; but I 
assured her that she would find these three 
more economical and efficient than any indi- 



William Ifowitt. 235 

vidual Galen that I could think of. Their 
names were, " Temperance, Early Hours, and 
Daily Exercise." That they were the only 
ones that I had employed for years, or meant 
to employ. Soon after, a gentleman wrote to 
me respecting these " Three Doctors, " and 
put them in print. Anon, they were made 
the subject of one of the " Ipswich Tracts ;" and 
on a visit, a few years ago, to the Continent, I 
found this tract translated into French, and 
the title-page enriched with the name of a 
French physician as the author. So much 
the better. If the name of the French physi- 
cian can recommend " The Three Doctors " 
to the population of France, I am so much 
the more obliged. 

I remain, dear sir, with sincere wishes for 
the prosperity of your journal, and the spread 
of the true principles of health and long life, 

Tours, faithfully, 

William Howttt. 

Rome, 41 Via di Porta Pinciana, ) 
May 20, 1871. y 



236 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

XX. 

THE LATE REV. JOHN" TODD. 

My Dear Sir: You ask me to describe, 
briefly, my "Workshop, and its value in pro- 
moting health of the brain and nerves, for sed- 
entary workers. I do this the more readily 
because I have received so many similar re- 
quests from different quarters that I am sat- 
isfied they originate from something better 
than curiosity. 

You must know, then, that when, some 
forty-five years ago, I married the fairest and 
best woman on this continent, and went to 
housekeeping, we were very poor. I soon 
found a thousand little things to be done or 
conveniences needed about our new home ; 
this led me to buy a hammer, and a gimlet, 
and a few nails; then I needed a saw, and a 
square, and a plane. About the first feat I 
accomplished was to make and paint and hang 
the outside blinds for every window in our 
house. This was a great achievement for a 
novice, and, if the blinds were not the most 
elegant, they made up in strength what they 
lacked in beauty. They remain on the house 



Eev. John Todd. 237 

to this day. Then we needed pins on which 
to hang our clothes, my harness, bridle, etc., 
and this led to my getting a clumsy wooden 
lathe, every part of which but the two cen- 
ters made of wood. I added power to the 
w T heel by boring holes in the outside of the 
driving-wheel and pouring in melted lead. 
The whole concern cost me but seven dol- 
lars. Now some foot-lathes cost as many 
thousands. My wife encouraged me by giv- 
ing me a little chamber for my shop. And 
few men ever accomplished much that is good 
without the encouragement of their wives. 

I have made it a rule never to buy a tool 
till I actually needed it, nor until I could 
use it, and then never to buy a poor tool 
if I could help it. Another rule has been 
to preserve, carefully, every tool I procured. 

Now, then, let us go into my shop. It is 
a chamber just back of my study — my men- 
tal workshop. It is a room sixteen feet square, 
with two north windows. (It is always 
desirable, if possible, to have a northern 
light for the shop.) As you enter the 
door you see every side of the room is cov- 
ered with tools, each tool hung in place, and 



238 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

the nicer, more valuable ones in large glass 
cases. The room contains over 1200 tools, 
upon any one of which I can lay my hand 
in the dark, and any one of which my eye 
would miss in a moment were it out of its 
place. Why so many? Because I have three 
lathes, and the tools that accompany them, 
besides chisels, planes, drills, glues, pol- 
ishing liquids, and a multitude of things and 
tools, which none but an old workman could 
comprehend. On one side of the room you 
see the name of " Woolsey," another, " As- 
pinwall," " Bigelow," "Hoadley," and the like. 
The English of it is, that all the tools on 
that side of the room were given me by Mr. 
Woolsey of Astoria, Mr. Aspinwall of Bar- 
rytown-on-Hudson, Mr. Bigelow of New Ha- 
ven, or Mr. Hoadley of Lawrence. That 
beautiful little steam engine and its complete 
boiler came from the latter gentleman. The 
fact is, that my friends, seeing me using and 
taking care of my tools, have sent me many 
most beautiful specimens of the skill of Paris 
and London. My entire stock of tools could 
not be bought for a thousand dollars. But 
you must recollect how long I have been in 



Rev. John Todd. 239 

gathering them and what kind friends have 
aided me. That overhead apparatus to my 
lathes gives me speed and nicety of work, 
so that I can alter the position of a box an 
inch in diameter three hundred and sixty 
times, and alter my tool the four-hundredth 
part of an inch, and at a speed of five thou- 
sand a minute. For nice work, you need the 
mandrel true, the motion still and very quick, 
and such tools or appliances as the eccentric 
chuck, universal cutter, eccentric cutter, ellip- 
tical cutter, ornamental drills, rose engine, 
not forgetting the compound slide-rest, etc., 
etc. With the proper tools, you can make 
very beautiful work — but, while others admire 
it, you will never see any that, to your eye, 
is not imperfect. You want, also, the fret 
saw and the circular saw attachment, though 
the latter is best to be run as a machine 
by itself with an angular adjustment, so that 
you can saw any angle. This is fine for mak- 
ing picture frames. 

As to materials for the lathe, I could 
write a chapter on woods and materials. 
Ivory is the most beautiful material. Wild 
boars' tusks for very small work, the black- 



240 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

thorn among the woods — a native of Africa — 
is the most preferred. Boxwood the most 
common. As to glues and varnishes, they, too, 
need a chapter. 

Now for the advantages of a workshop for 
the sedentary man. 

1. It enables him to have a thousand lit- 
tle conveniences about him which he can 
never otherwise have. He can mend a lock, 
cover and recover a trunk, fix his disordered 
clock, mend tin, and almost anything except 
to put a bottom in a frying-pan, which I 
have been asked to do. 

2. It creates and develops mathematical 
taste and skill. I don't think I had, by 
nature, any mechanical skill; but now, my 
friends think I might -have made a good 
tinker, and my appreciation of what is nicely 
executed is greatly enhanced. 

3. The workshop is a wonderful promoter 
of health. Once having it, you will ever 
have some little job on hand. When you 
are weary at your writing-table, when the 
brain reels or muddles, when the thoughts 
stagnate, jump up and run into your shop, 
and there, on your feet, in a different air, 



Rev. John Todd. 241 

your mind turns at once to the thing in hand. 
You leave the chain of thought which you 
were trying to carry on, you at once are ab- 
sorbed in a new train of thinking, and your 
mind is refreshed and invigorated. You are 
compelled to give all your attention to the 
thing in hand. Sometimes it will be solder- 
ing, or brazing, or tempering a tool, or pol- 
ishing a bosom-pin, or contriving how to use 
a tool in a new way. My lathes are all 
very unlike in form and size, and yet there 
is not a tool among them which I have not 
contrived to use on any one of them. This 
change of the position of the body, and this 
turning the mind into a channel so unlike 
that of the study, so results that in half an hour, 
or even fifteen minutes, the mind is wonder- 
fully refreshed, and you go back to your 
books quite a new man. I consider my work- 
shop an invaluable aid to health. I make 
everything — beehives, trunks, delicate ivory 
boxes, with the lid screwed on forty threads 
to the inch, bosom-pins, and almost any 
nick-nack. But I make no boast of great 
skill; compared with Mr. Aspinwall, I am a 
coarse bungler. 



24:2 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

Now for a few hints to young, profes- 
sional men. 

1. Begin and move slowly. Buy a very 
few tools at first. Learn to use, skillfully, 
before you buy more, those on hand. 

2. Never buy a poor tool, however cheap. 

3. If you get a foot-lathe, get a good one; 
the u swing " should not be less than five 
inches — six is better. The lathe is the cen- 
ter of the shop, and that will eventually call 
around you all the tools you can want or use. 
Let it not call too fast. 

4. Let your room be as dry as possible; 
keep your tools bright and the handles good, 
if not beautiful ; use the best of olive oil, very 
little at a time, but quite often. 

5. Keep your tools sharp ; the great com- 
fort of your shop will depend on your doing 
that; the lathe abhors a dull tool, and the 
nicer the tool, the more need of care on this 
point. 

6. Buy the Ceylon ivory, if possible, and 
the best ornamental woods in our large cit- 
ies. You can find tliem nowhere else. 

7. Don't expect you can become an ex- 
pert in a day. You will need patience and 



Rev. John Todd. 243 

perseverance, and they will briijg you great 
rewards. 

8. What I have said seems to imply the 
lathe or nothing. I do not mean this. You 
may have a valuable shop and save hundreds 
of dollars and fill your house " with all 
pleasant things," and never have a lathe. 
I made book-eases, the very same I use now 
for myself and children, before I knew how 
to use the lathe. Indeed, the lathe is only 
the culmination of the good things you want, 
and I have dwelt upon it because I was de- 
scribing my shop just as it now is. But 
hundreds of men have a very valuable shop 
and tools who have no lathe and no desire 
for one. This to me is unaccountable. Don't 
wait for any one thing before you begin. 
Tools make you independent. 

9. Keep your shop locked, so that no one 
can handle your tools but yourself. This is 
very essential to your comfort. Others will be 
sure to break or dull your tools, and annoy 
you beyond measure. 

10. If you have a lathe, learn to grind 
your own tools on your lathe ; finish at the 



24:4: Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

oil-stone, and the nicer tools on leather, cov- 
ered with crocus, L e., rouge. 

11. Learn to temper your own tools, 
which you can soon do. You can hardly 
buy them tempered aright — usually they are 
too soft. 

12. Keep your shop clean and neat, so 
that you rather feel proud to have your 
friends visit it. 

Yours very truly, 

Johk Todd. 

XXI. 

THE LATE REV. CHARLES CLEVELAND. 

My Dear Sir : I, with much pleasure, re- 
ply to your request that I give you some ac- 
count of my habits of life. Should I live to the 
21st of June, I shall have passed ninety-nine 
years on earth. My habits have, under kind 
Providence, been uniformly on the scale of 
temperance. Intoxicating drinks and the use 
of tobacco have been denied. My diet hath 
been simple, avoiding whatever bordered on 
luxury. You ask at what age I could ac- 
complish the most work ? I never, from 



Rev. Charles Cleveland. 245 

youth, ate idle bread ; always found that the 
physical powers were benefited by constant 
regard to useful labor, in one direction or an- 
other, and in keeping the mind free from anx- 
iety. When employed at the desk, I have felt 
the importance of taking time for exercise 
of the limbs, in walking, as often as my 
duties at the desk would permit. The short- 
est days of the year I am up at 7, the 
longest days at 4. I can not remember the 
time, from youth, when it was my pleasure 
to lay in bed after the sun was up. Again, 
as a matter essential to my health of body 
and soul, I have many years avoided party 
festivities, convinced that multitudes of per-, 
sons' lives are sacrificed from keeping late 
hours, seeking a happiness they can never 
find while in pursuit of worldly pleasures, 
to the utter neglect of the living oracles, 
teaching us to place our " affections on things 
above. " Again, although daily feeling my 
deficiencies in the performance of duties, I 
am happy in the assurance that my heavenly 
Father, who knoweth my infirmities, remem- 
bering I am dust, will accept me, and at 



246 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

the end of my pilgrimage take me to Him- 
self, through the mediation of his beloved 
Son, to whom then I shall be alike pure, 
and see Him as He is, never more to part. 
I have found it a very important object 
to keep the body open, never allowing mat- 
ters of business to interfere with this essen- 
tial regard to the preservation of health. 

1. My time of retirement is at an early 
hour, not beyond 10 o'clock; and of rising, 
as soon as awake, and before the sun, 
throughout the year. 

2. At meals my food is simple and nour- 
ishing, avoiding whatever may be regarded as 
luxuries. 

3. My drink at the table is "Adam's 

Ale." 

4. I taste no spirituous liquors. 

5. Tobacco I abhor in all its forms as I 
would poison, persuaded its use hath been as 
an harbinger to " strong drink," which has slain 
its thousands and tens of thousands. 

Thus, dear philanthropist, I have given you 
my " habits of living," and would just add 
that, preserving a conscience void of offense 



IF. A., M.D. 247 

toward God and man, my sleep in its season 
is undisturbed and refreshing. 

I am, respectfully, yours, 

Charles Cleveland. 
(Born in Norwich, Conn., June 21, 1772.) 
Boston, June 1, 1871. 



XXII. 

W. A., M.D. 

Sir: After an experience and observation 
of life extending over 73 years, I have come 
to the conclusion that the state of mind in 
which we allow ourselves habitually to remain 
determines very largely, for good or for evil, 
our mental health. There are two states which 
I will mention as favoring a healthy nervous 
system, or the reverse. The one is what I 
call a positive state, in which the mind resists 
and throws off unfavorable mental impres- 
sions, so that they do not gain a foothold in 
the brain. The other is the negative state, 
that does not throw off bad mental states, 
but harbors them until they occupy the en- 
tire thought, to the exclusion of everything 
else. Such people have the blues, are easily 



248 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

discouraged, become despondent and low spirit- 
ed, imagine the worst is to happen, find fault 
with their best friends, and are the most mis- 
erable creatures on earth. To them, their 
troubles are real, not imaginary. It is of no 
use to tell them the world is not going 
wrong; there is no room in their brains for 
such a thought. Such patients cannot be cured 
by medical treatment of the ordinary kind. 
They can, however, easily cure themselves by 
working out of the negative state, which leaves 
them the prey to their fancies, into the pos- 
itive state, that actually compels these fancies 
to flee away and leave the brain in a condi- 
tion to produce agreeable sensations. Let such 
persons every morning, when they get out of 
bed, assert in the most positive manner that 
they will not once during the day harbor a dis- 
agreeable thought, but the very instant it arises 
they will drive it from the mind, as they 
would a viper from their beds, and be very 
sure it will go. Understand me. Every 
species of uncomfortable mental sensation must 
be driven out, no matter what it is. If the 
effort is strong enough, even bodily pain can 
be driven out too. I know what I say from 



W. A., M.D. 249 

my own experience. No amount of bathing, 
dieting, or drugging will cure the man or 
woman who continues in the negative frame 
of mind. When the positive condition has 
been attained permanently, under no circum- 
stances fall back again. 

Well do I remember the day and the hour 
when I made this, to me, great discovery. I 
had suffered for a month the most intense 
mental pain because my business did not go 
to please me. I found fault with my wife and 
children, and nothing suited me. Things were 
getting most uncomfortable for all of us. I 
got up one morning as usual and expected to 
have a bad day, when all at once an impulse 
seized me as if it had come from the other 
world, and, straightening myself up to full 
height, I said to myself emphatically, " By 
the Eternal, these miserable feelings have got 
to go ; not once to-day will I tolerate one 
of them in my mind for an instant." I kept 
my word, and have done so till now, and 
find it is easy enough to hold them at bay. 
Indeed my mental condition now is a positive 
one, and not easily am I thrown into that 



250 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

state which for many years made life more 
or less miserable. 

I may add that this principle is applicable 
to a large number of mental processes. The 
man in the positive instead of the negative 
condition will have untold advantage in what- 
ever he undertakes. I may also say that 
many persons will find much aid in this mat- 
ter through music, if they are musicians, 
through humorous stories, through occupation, 
and by reading from books of the highest 
order of moral and religious writers, such as 
inspire faith, hope and courage. Of course the 
laws of health must be observed. 

W. A., M.D. 

XXIII. 

SARAH J. HALE. 

Dear Sir: I have not been in my usual 
health for some days, and am not now able to 
give you the information you desire. I am 
sorry to disappoint you, but having entered 
my ninetieth year my age must be my ex- 
cuse for inability to comply with your re- 
quest. 



S. J. Hale — II and M. Mann. 251 

I enclose my "Farewell" to the readers 
of the Lady's JSook, which will show you 
what I have attempted to do in my fifty years 
of literary life. .During those fifty years my 
health .has been so good that I have but 
once failed in preparing the u Editor's Table " 
at the appointed time. I attribute this con- 
tinued health in part to a naturally sound 
constitution, and very much to regular and 
temperate habits of life, early rising, and my 
invariable rule of doing all literary work by 
daylight, especially in the morning. 

With sincere wishes for vour success in 
the work you have undertaken, 

I am very truly yours, 

Sarah J. Hale. 

1413 Locust St., Phil' a, ) 
Nov. 19, 1877. \ 



XXIV. 

HORACE AND MARY MAKK 

My Dear Sir: In regard to my husband 
and myself, both of highly nervous and sanguine 
temperaments combined — perfect steam-engines 
in energy — -it is my conviction, after living 



252 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

seventy years, that what has been most ben- 
eficial to us has been good diet and rest — 
the latter even more than the former. With 
all his wisdom, however, my husband did not 
know how to spare himself, and died, as I 
think, prematurely, of fatigue. He undertook 
what no man could accomplish with impunity, 
and gave himself no rests. Mr. Combe warned 
him twenty years before, but it did not avail. 
He wanted him to live and watch over the 
growth of his work, and not to die prema- 
turely. I have heeded the warning, and, al- 
though I have been a great sufferer for the 
last two years, I have rallied and am im- 
proving enough to enjoy life again, a pleasure 
I had utterly lost. 

My family relations have been all I 
could wish, and therefore I have been happy 
and have lived down other trials. A good 
biologist once said to my husband, " You are 
mistaken in thinking you need so much ex- 
ercise: what you need is sleep" He turned 
to me and said : " Mrs. Mann, do all you can 
to procure him sleep — at all times, short sleeps 
and long sleeps — but sleep." I think he sub- 



Horace and Mary Mann. 253 

mitted to what he considered the loss of time 
much better after that, and I did my part 
faithfully. But in that last great extremity, 
I was much occupied with my children, who 
were all ill, and had not so much time as I 
wanted to help him — there never was a time 
since I had been married when I could do 
so little for him. If it had not been for that 
stress of care, the effects of that Western cli- 
mate would, I am persuaded, have length- 
ened his life. It is a painful subject to dwell 
upon when one feels that a dear friend need 
not to have died. 

My oldest son had very much the same 
history — a young man of rare promise, but 
with his father's intenseness of temperament, 
which made him the victim of science. I 
do not believe in people dying for science: 
I believe in their living for it, for it will 
not hurt the world to wait a little while. 

Yours with regard, 

Mary Mann. 
Cambridge, Ma.ss, April, 1878. 



254 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

XXV. 

JULIA E. SMITH. 

Dear Sir : As you wish me to write 
something about my health habits, having lived 
to the age of nearly ninety years, I will do 
it. Of late I have attended but little to the 
dead languages, my time being mostly taken 
up in replying to letters from all parts of 
the country, upon the usage we have re- 
ceived from the officials of our native town, 
and also from correspondents concerning my 
literal translation of the Bible. I have all my 
life been in the habit of rising early; in 
winter at five o'clock, and the rest of the 
year at half-past four, or as soon as I can see. I 
have never made it a practice to study even- 
ings, and when a student at school I always 
learned my lessons at early morn. I have 
exercised much in the open air : being the 
fourth sister — and the youngest sister a good 
deal younger than I — I was made a sort of 
errand boy by our father. Having no son, 
he called on me to assist him in driving his 
cattle to the east lots, more than a mile from 
home, and sent me to drive the cows home 



Julia E. Smith. 255 

and put them back in the morning. I do 
not remember when I did not know how 
to milk, to ride on horseback, or to drive a 
horse before a carriage. Our mother, who 
was quite unwell while we were children, had 
a room to herself and could see to us but 
very little, so we were left to do many things 
she knew nothing about. We would chase 
about the lots, walk in the water, climb trees 
and jump over fences in the spring when 
school was out. My sister, next older than 
myself, once wanted to find out the length 
of the brook in our pasture. It was very 
crooked and measured a mile within a quarter 
of a mile's distance. She took me along with 
her early one morning in April, and we took 
off our shoes and stockings and waded, the 
water being deep in places, until we got 
tired and hungry, when we came to the con- 
clusion that there was no end to it, and 
wended our way back. When we arrived home 
it was three o'clock in the afternoon. 

The district school was more than a half mile 
from us, and no matter how deep the snow, 
I would trudge through it. My father was 
a lawyer and almost always away from home. 



256 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

so I could never ride. As there were no 
rubber boots in those days, I often sat away 
from the fire all day- with wet feet. I have 
been in the habit ever so long of washing 
my feet daily in cold water. I cannot see 
that it tires me more now to walk than 
formerly. I often walk to our post office, one 
and a quarter mile and back, without sitting 
down until I get home. I have been in the 
habit for many years of bathing in cold water 
every morning. Indeed, I can truly say that 
I have never felt the infirmities of age, not 
often thinking whether I am old or young. 
I have thought more of it this winter than I 
ever did before, for while I was in Washing- 
ton I was put in mind that I must be helped 
at almost every step I took. It would not 
do, they said, for so old a person to walk up 
stairs and down, or even go down the steps, 
without a kind friend on each side for 
support. If these people could see me run 
after my pet calves Taxie and V^otie, or, rather, 
run to get away from them, since I got home, 
I think they would be convinced that I could 
step a foot forward without assistance. We 
were all healthy children. We were not pro- 



Julia E. Smith. 257 

vided with many pennies, having to earn our 
own pin money, which we did by picking 
up walnuts, as we had a goodly quantity of, 
trees near by, and the Glastonbury walnuts 
had a good name in market. We were 
allowed all the money for the sale of what we 
gathered, and there was so great strife among 
us to see who could get the most, that when 
there came a blowing storm we would get up 
at midnight before we could discern a single 
nut, and trudge off after them. No doubt 
this was healthful work, but it never entered 
our heads to do it for that. 

As to diet, we were brought up on bread 
and milk. Our parents loved it, and they 
generally permitted their children to have 
what they liked themselves. I usually take 
one meal a day of milk now. I never use 
a stimulant of any kind, except sometimes a 
cup of coffee ; I drink no tea at all ; I have 
had but one hard cold in thirty years, for 
when I feel one coming on I go without 
eating till it leaves me ; generally one meal 
suffices, but if not I continue the starving 
plan until I am cured. I never was a 
good sleeper, though I generally keep my 



258 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

bed about eight hours m the twenty -four. 
I never thought bodily exercise did much 
good unless for some purpose. I was at the 
Troy Seminary when young, to learn mathe- 
matics, as figures were always my forte. I 
could not sleep, and thought I was almost 
sick. Mrs. Willard told me that I did not 
take' the exercise I did at home, and if I 
would take a long walk every morning as soon 
as I could see to go, I would be much 
better. I tried it, and I think it weakened 
me, for I had no object in view but to get 
better, which fixed my mind upon myself, and 
I consider that we enjoy the best health when 
we think the least of ourselves. Had I been 
obliged .to go because I must attend to some- 
thing necessary to be done, I have no doubt 
these *" long walks would have helped me. 
Working in the open air is without any ques- 
tion excellent for the health of those who are 
sedentary in their habits, as I was during the 
seven years I was translating the Bible from 
the original languages five times. I then 
found it necessary to take active exercise, and 
I set to raising calves, which amused me 
much, as they would follow me anywhere. 



Mary J. Studley, M.D. 259 

I never sat at my desk very long, as every 
fifth week my sister and I took turns about 
seeing to the kitchen affairs, and I did not 
quit housework, though absorbed in my trans- 
lations. I have not often indulged in eat- 
ing to my hurt. I have been regular in my 
meals, eating three times a day, but never 
late in the evening, using scarcely any meat, 
but a good deal of fruit, especially at break- 
fast. As to confectionery, I have made use 
of very little all my days, as we were not 
supplied with much change when children un- 
less we worked for it, and we took more 
pleasure in buying a good book with the 
money than in eating it up. 

Julia E. Smith. 
Glastonbury, Conn. 

XXYI. 

MARY J. STUDLEY, M.D. 
NERVOUSNESS IN GIRLS. 

Dear Sir : It gives me great pleasure 
to comply with your request for a pa£*e ot 
my experience in the direction of lessons upon 
the "Hygiene of Brain and Nerves" among 



260 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

the young women of the various schools to 
which I am, from time to time, welcomed 
as a teacher of the laws of health, and if, 
among the many rays which shall combine 
to shed a purer light upon so important a 
subject, my one little ray can contribute its 
modest glimmer, I shall be giad to have 
sent it forth. 

It has been my privilege, for more than 
twenty-five years, to be intimately associated 
with young women, either as teacher in the 
school-room, in the earlier years, or as medi- 
cal practitioner or teacher of Hygiene during 
the later ones, and every day's added ex- 
perience only confirms me in the position I 
have occupied from the first relative to the 
various forms of nervousness which characterize 
us as a sex. That position affirms that the 
best possible balance for a weak, nervous 
system is a well-developed muscular system. 
Weak, shaky, hysterical nerves always accom- 
pany soft, flabby muscles, and it is a mournful 
fact that the majority of the young women 
whom I meet in schools are notably deficient 
in muscular development. The well-rounded 
and plump bodies are not, as a rule, mus- 



Mary J. Studley, M.D. 261 

cular bodies, as may be easily seen by the 
style of walking, but are rather the result 
of an excess of adipose tissue, which is so 
apt to pass current for good flesh, of which 
it is the poorest counterfeit. The excessively 
thin and the excessively thick are the figures 
which develop hysteria ; the former because 
they are all brain and nerve, and the latter 
because they are all fat and no muscle. 
Both types are highly emotional, and can 
develop an attack of hysteria on the slight- 
est provocation. Both are prone to worry 
and fret, and the more the one frets the 
thinner she grows, while the other frets and 
grows fat. 

Both are house-plants. The thin one drinks 
strong tea and passes sleepless nights. The 
thick one puts tight bands around her stomach 
and liver to make herself look like the thin 
one, and when the heart asserts its crowded 
condition by a "palpitation," due to the gases 
of indigestion in a cramped stomach, she is 
sure she is going to die with heart disease. 
Neither the very thin nor the very thick 
one can ever be relied upon for good mental 
work, for how can a healthy mind make its 



262 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

home in a sickly body ? Neither has the 
hue of health in her cheeks, nor its lustre in 
her eyes, and both promise, only too surely, 
to swell the ranks of women with some one 
of the protean forms of "female weakness" 
when they leave school. 

I need not describe the non-historical, 
ruddy, vigorous, self- sustained, comfortable, 
non-fretting third type. We all know her 
by her elastic tread, her easy carriage, her 
composure, and her grace of form and mo- 
tion. We can count upon her just as surely 
as we count upon each day's sun. She is 
the natural young woman. & She has inher- 
ited a sound body from healthy parents, and 
they have taught her to treat it as a temple 
for the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, instead 
of a frame for the display of dry goods. You 
can tell, by her motion, that she has good 
muscles, and that every individual one of them 
is just as free to act as were the muscles in 
those beautiful Greek figures which the thin 
girl pretends to admire, but refuses to imi- 
tate. Her dress is light, simple, clean and 
comely, and does not fetter her body at any 
point, for she is dress-reformed. 



Mary J. Studley, M.D. 263 

I think it is " Jean Paul " who says : 
" Half the sorrows of women would be 
averted if they would repress the speech they 
know to be useless — nay, the speech they have 
resolved not to utter;" and according to the 
best medical authoritv, the other half would van- 
ish if they would put off the fetters they know to 
be worse than useless in the way of bones, steels, 
bands and strings and let their bodies main- 
tain the shape which nature intended they 
should have. So long as women tie and 
bind and lace up their muscles, whether 
it be those of the body or its extremities, 
thus forbidding the free circulation of the 
blood, which is the one essential for healthy 
nerves (for what is pain but the report of 
the nerve that the blood is either in the 
wrong place, or else dirty for want of air and 
exercise ?), just so long will the nerves run 
away with the muscles, and women will pine 
and fret and worry themselves and all their 
friends with their ever-recurring neuralgias 
and hysterias. Plain food, no tea, plenty 01 
milk, no late hours, no love stories, a skin 
kept active by daily contact with cold water, 
plenty of outdoor exercise, and a dress which 



264 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

allows every muscle and every organ to do 
its allotted work — this is the hygienic regi- 
men for our young women — this their safeguard 
against all forms of women's diseases, provided 
they come from healthy parentage. I am 
more and more convinced, with every fresh 
contact with the various forms of uterine 
disease, which lie at the root of most neu- 
rotic manifestations, that the abominable man- 
ner in which women have so long abused 
their bodies by misapplied dress has done 
more than any one thing to swell the ranks 
of sickly, nervous, hysterical and unhappy 
ones, and that the dress-reform is one of the 
greatest reforms of the century. 

Mary J. Studley, MJD. 

(Resident Physician and Teacher of Natural Sciences, 
State Normal School, Framingham, Mass. Also, 
author of "What Our Girls Ought to Know.") 

XXVII. 

ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH. 

HEADACHES. 

Dear Iriend: It being your mission to 
help on healthful and sesthetic methods of 
life, allow me to say a word about headaches, 



Elizabeth OaJces Smith. 265 

about which I can speak with some emphasis. 
In the course of our pleasant pilgrimage in 
this part of the universal spheres, we some- 
times have the heart-ache, as our human and 
humanizing sensibilities have play, but it 
seems to me utterly needless to have the 
headache. I never have had it, unless com- 
bined with the above exception. I attribute 
my exemption to a habit of mine, inaugurated 
early in life, never to eat a second time an 
article of diet that had once made me con- 
scious of a physical organ, or, in other words, 
had disagreed with me. 

This would seem a natural law to any of 
us, at all advanced beyond our Cousin An- 
thropoids, but it is far from being generally 
practiced. I by no means place this absti- 
nence among the virtues, because so utterly 
void of reason is the opposite practice, of in- 
dulging an unwholesome appetite. It is true I 
come from the austere Pilgrim stock, gener- 
ally devoid of an undue proclivity to table- 
luxury. I see people going about with hand 
upon the stomach, gaunt and cadaverous, and 
actually extorting and defrauding us of our 
sympathies as Dyspeptics. They are not 



266 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

ashamed to be known as such, as if there 
were no disgrace attached to organic disease; 
nothing nauseous in letting the world know 
that you, exceptionally, have a stomach; that 
is, that something is the matter of it, because 
the laws of life have been violated. Then 
come the crooked back, the bars under the 
eyes, the untidy yellow tongue, if we must 
talk with them — all the result of an abuse 
of the table; but worst of all racking head- 
aches, that totally unfit the unhappy possessor 
for any active duty, or for the ordinary 
amenities of life. People have to go about 
on tiptoe where they are, and little children 
must smother down the laugh native to child- 
hood. 

I do not acknowledge the right of one 
sinner to compel innocent persons around him 
to do penance for his sins. His selfishness 
and gluttony are an abomination. Gluttony is 
an ugly - sounding word, but it is the only 
one that will convey the idea; for all these 
headaches — that is, with the exception that I 
have named (and I would like to say even 
this will disappear as we enter more fully and 
believingly into the great relations of exist- 



Elizabeth Oakes Smith. 267 

ence) — are caused by a derangement of the 
digestive organs, brought about by indulgence 
of the table. a A good Trencher man," char- 
acterized old vikings and warriors; but our civili- 
zation contemns that aspect, and the use of 
the brain, rather than brute force, necessi- 
tates a more refined method at the table. 
Scholars at least somewhat covet that Para- 
disical sleep of which the great Milton tells : 

" Light and airy, pure digestion bred, 
And temperate vapors bland. " 

Shakspeare had a delicate sense of the 

sweetness of digestion, and the refinement of 

an esthetic diet, when he made the sensitive, 

though voluptuous, Cleopatra recoil from her 

possible experience should she be carried in 

triumph to Rome, and she resolves upon 

death sooner than be 

"Uplifted to the view; in their thick breaths, 
Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded, 
And forced to drink their vapor." 

We of the Union are a dainty people, 
fond of nice things, varieties, one dish sup- 
planted by another at our tables, thus un- 
duly stimulating the appetite and taxing di- 
gestion. We do not thrive well on the coarse 



268 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

fare which will satisfy the peasantry or sol- 
diery of European nations. It may be that 
we shall be compelled to adopt the same 
method that renders it necessary to give the 
man who is suffering from delirium tremens 
a stimulant occasionally, before he can, with- 
out death, be let down to the platform of to- 
tal abstinence ; and thus our people, to be rid 
of our national disease, will need to go grad- 
ually to work and reject piecemeal our too 
luxurious diet. 

I often am amazed at the patience, for- 
bearance, and sweetness of Nature, her long- 
suffering, before she lets loose the sleuthe 
hounds of palsy or indigestion upon a man 
who piles his plate with such vast quantities 
and such incongruous materials of diet. Some- 
times, not always, she forbears with him, and 
simply allows him to pet himself into corpu- 
lency, and fat men will even boast that they 
"have not seen their feet for twenty years." 

No brain of any magnitude can endure 
this, and, presto, a vein snaps and the man is 

" Felled, as butcher felleth ox," 
and we call it apoplexy, when another name 
would be nearer the truth. 



Elizabeth Oakes Smith. 269 

A distinguished writer once asked me, 
" What do you write on ? " I did not quite 
understand, and floundered about somewhat 
as to subjects, table, etc. 

" No, no ; what stimulant ? " 

Now, I never, in my life, prepared my- 
self for writing or speakiug by any such 
extraneous method. My ordinary, somewhat 
plain, meal — not much meat, with one cup 
of tea or coffee — suffices for all occasions. 
From childhood I have been accustomed to 
fruit, both native and tropical ; highly flavored 
dishes are repugnant to me. I like to have 
an orange, apple and grapes, with a dry 
biscuit, before me, as the most effectual and 
delicious stimulant to appetite. I have always 
assimilated kindly, with little waste, and as 
I grow older I require perhaps a little less 
food — not much less. 

I have never seen the time when, with a 
coarse cracker or baked sweet apple, my brain 
did not take pleasantly to its task. I do 
not mean to say I have always lived in this 
way — I mean only to say that it is my 
way, when I can choose without disarrang- 
ing the methods of those about me, and I 



270 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

have always been telling people whose hospi- 
tality I shared in my long career as a lec- 
turer: "Do not make any cake or pastry or 
rich dishes for me — I am happier and better 
without them." 

You will see from this, dear friend, why 
I think it unpardonable to have headaches, 
and how fully I sympathize in the simpler 
modes of diet which you recommend, and 
which I have practiced whenever possible, and 
in a fuller degree than most of our people. 
Yours truly, 

Elizabeth Oakes Smith, 
Pastor Independent Church, Canastota. 
Canastota, Mad. Co., N. Y. 



XXYIII. 

REBECCA B. GLEASON, M.D. 

Dear Sir: I advise women to keep off 
nervousness and the fidgets by more out-of-door 
exercise. The range of their recreation lies too 
exclusively in the house. Fancy work, giving 
and receiving calls and company, constitute 
little change of thought and less muscular 
exercise than they really need. If they would 



Rebecca B* Gleason, M.D. 271 

walk, ride, and picnic with their children, 
they would give much healthful pleasure to 
the little folks and gain for themselves whole- 
some diversion. These outdoor excursions are 
easy, if the dress be plain and the food 
simple. Open air will give the relish. 

A moonlight ramble is much better than 
an evening party for securing sound sleep. 
Delicate bodies with sensitive nerves fail 
early from too much indoor life. Such per- 
sons have their troubles, as we all do, but 
for want of change of scene cherish them so con- 
tinuously that they become nervous and super- 
sensitive. Active exercise has great power to 
put to flight morbid mental conditions. But 
women say, "I have not strength to walk or 
work." Why ? Because they have exhausted 
their nerve-force in thought, in feeling, in emo- 
tion, and have little left for the muscles. 
They can change the current by change of 
habits. Many think there is no diversion 
for them because they cannot go to the sea- 
side, the mountains, or to some mineral spring, 
when there is within easy reach many a 
pretty view of hill, of meadow, of river, or 
ravine, which has seldom been visited, and 



272 Physical and Intellectual Habits. 

never studied so as to be remembered and ap- 
preciated. The Infinite Father has spread 
an unlimited feast in the open country, be- 
fore every eye ; and, if what we see is really 
appropriated, by head and heart, we v shall be 
refreshed and strengthened for our work. 

Yours truly, 

R. B. Gleasoj*, M.D. 
Elmira, N. Y., Nov. 20, 1877. 



INDEX. 

PART I. 
A. 

PAGE 

Air, Scenery and Society, Change of. 63 

Abstemiousness, too great, 111 effects of 77 

A hint for those who need it . ... 93 

Alcohol, Effects of, upon the mind 120 

Agassiz' advice 128 

B. 

Brain, description of the 9 

Brains of Animals 9 

Bodily Heat and Nervous Action 38 

Blood, Supply of, for the Nerves 38 

Bloodlessness, Nervousness caused by 39 

Brains, wounded or injured 40 

Butcher's meat, not food par excellence 65 

Bantingism 65 

Blandford, Dr., Lecture by 74 

Brain foods. 96 

Bathing, cold, Carefulness in. ... .. 99 

Best recreations for the Nervous 103 

Brain, Difference between Man's and Woman's 123 

Brain labor, Physiological effects of excessive 126 

Brain, The, Training both sides of 127 

Brain, The, Exercise for , . 132 



274 Index. 

C. 

PAGE 

Cerebrum, The, Its functions 10 

Cerebellum, The, Description and functions of 11 

Cranial and Spinal Nerves, their number, names, 

uses and distribution 20 

Cranial Nerves, Special remarks concerning 25 

Climate and Nervousness Ill 

Checking Morbid Mental Action 119 

Callow Brains 146 

D. 

Depression of Spirits from unequal Nervous action. . 32 

Distressed with Learning 148 

E. 

Eating fast, and Nervousness 100 

Expectant attention 118 

Entering the Garden of Knowledge 148 

F. 

Force of different brains, comparative 43 

Forgetfulness, Philosophy of , 44 

Fretfulness, a Nervous disease. 49 

Food, healthful, Importance of 61 

Food, good, More important than medicine 75 

Food, quantity of, for brain workers 91 

G. 

German Amusements 105 

Girls, dull and spiritless 122 

H. 

Hygiene of the Brain and Nerves 7 

How the Nerves act 34 

Healthy Nervous Action, Its condition 37 

How poisonous matter affects the Nerves 38 

Hysteria 60 

Head work, Rest from, not always necessary. 64 

Herbert Spencer, A wise thought from 141 

Hot house Brains 144 

Health and Education should go together 148 



Index. 275 

I. 

PAGE 

Important Questions answered 88 

Irritability from imperfect sleep 99 

K. 

Keep up a stout heart 63 

Kent, Chancellor; How he laid the basis of a sound 

constitution 134 

L. 

Living by Rule 8 

Letting the Brain lie fallow 146 

M. 

Modern Science, Tendency of 8 

Medulla Oblongata, description and functions of . ., . 15 

Monotony and Nervousness 88 

Mental overstrain of Merchants 101 

Mental Hygiene for the Aged 102 

Mental Hygiene, Brown-Sequard's Rules of 116 

Mental Vigor, Amount of blood necessary for 129 

Mental Action, Equally distributed 147 

N. 

Nervous Substance, Composition of 28 

Nervous Tissue, Destruction and reproduction of . .. 28 
Nervous System sympathetic, Its description and 

functions 29 

Nervous System sympathetic, Its slow action 31 

Nervous Systems, The two, Harmonious develop- 
ment of 33 

Nervous Substance, Continuity of 40 

Nervous Activity, Limit to 41 

Nervous Exhaustion 46 

Nervous Exhaustion, Philosophy of 47 

Nervous Exhaustion, Temporary and Permanent. ... 47 

Nervous Exhaustion, Varieties of 48 

Nervous Sj'stem, The, compared to a machine 48 

Nervous Disorders, Propagation of 50 

Nervousness, How to cure it 53 



276 Index. 

PAGE 

Nervousness, Symptoms of 59 

Nervous Persons, Exercises for 62 

Nervousness, Cure of — Continued 64 

Nervous Disorders, Yalue of a large supply of food in 74 

Nervous people eat too little 75 

Nervousness among Business Men 76 

Necessity of frequent holidays for the Nervous 77 

Neuralgia; Something about it 85 

Nervousness among Office-clerks 89 

Nervousness among Farmers' Wives, and how cured 90 

Nervous System, Effects of grief upon the 91 

Nervous Exhaustion through indolence 92 

Nervous Temperaments 94 

Nothing in excess 95 

Nervous People, Three mottos for 95 

Night- workers on daily newspapers 98 

Nervous people must not work too fast 99 

Necessity for recreation 103 

Nervousness in Women, Unsuspected causes of. ... . 109 

Nervousness, Excessive child-bearing a cause of 110 

Nervousness, Domestic infelicity a cause of 110 

Nervous Children 110 

Nervousness, Errors in dress a cause of 110 

Nervousness, Scrofula a cause of Ill 

Nervous School-children, Remedy for 115 

Normally developed Brains 120 

O. 

Oxygen, Necessity of for the Nerves 40 

Oysters, raw, before going to bed 62 

Out-of-door Life for City Women 90 

P. 

Poor blood and Nerve force 40 

Physical training, Excessive 66 

Passive intellects ... . 131 

Parents, Gross errors of 135 

Phrenology, Errors corrected by 136 



Index. 277 

R. 

PAGE 

Recuperation from Sickness promoted by the Sympa- 
thetic Nerves 31 

Radcliffe, Dr., A Lecture by 64 

S. 

Spinal Cord, The description and functions of 17 

Sleep, Necessary amount of 61 

Swallowing medicine, Love for 87 

Sleep, Its relation to mental health 98 

Sleep, Difficulty in getting 100 

Sleep, Rejuvenating power of 125 

Storing up Mental Vigor 146 

T. 

Too Wicked to Live 80 

Teachers, Nervous exhaustion of 112 

Tyndall's, Prof. , advice to Students 130 

Too early Mental Culture a mistake 138 

Take Nature for a second mother 148 

U. 
Unconcious Cerebration, Illustrations of 137 

Y. 

Vice, Its effects upon the Brain 45 

Vices, Secret 109 

W. 

Will and Judgment, Their effect on Nervousness. ... 45 

Walking, as an exercise, overestimated 69 

Woman's, A, objections to a good appetite 77 

Wedding Journeys as causes of Nervousness 109 

What our Thinkers and Scientists say 118 

Women, Larger interests and nobler pursuits for. . .. 122 

Walter Scott's Boyhood. 140 

Worthless Triumphs 146 



278 Index. 

PART II. 
A. 

PAGE 

Alcott, A. Bronson, A Letter from 195 

B. 

Buchanan, Dr. J. R., A Letter from , 171 

Baltzer, Edward, The German Reformer, Interesting 

Letter from 190 

Bryant, William Cullen, Letters from 214 

C. 
Cleveland, Rev. Charles, Health habits of 244 

D. 
Dodge, William E., Letter from , 201 

F. 
Frothingham, O. B. ; How he conducts his physical 

and intellectual life 150 

Foot, Judge, A Letter from 211 

G. 
Garrison, William Lloyd, A Letter from 194 

H. 

Higginson's, Thomas Wentworth, rules of intellect- 
ual and physical health , . . 182 

Hunting, Value of for Nervous Invalids 198 

Hopkins, Mark, Ex-President, A Letter from 213 

Howitt, William, A very interesting Letter from — 219 

How to throw off bad feelings 247 

Hale, Sarah J., Letter from, concerning her health 

habits 250 

Headaches . 264 

How Women may keep off the fidgets by out-of-door 
life 270 

L. 
Lewis, Dio, Interesting Letter from 205 



Index. . 279 

It 

PAGE 

Mann, Mary, Interesting Letter from, concerning 
Horace Mann and herself 251 

Newman, Prof. Francis W., Interesting Letter from 159 
Nichols, T. L., M.D., Concerning the physical and 

intellectual habits of Englishmen 166 

Nervousness in Girls 259 

P. 
Perkins, Frederic Beecher; What he thinks 207 

S. 

Smith, G-errit, Physical habits of, described by his 
daughter 179 

Smith, Julia E. ; How she grew up to healthy wo- 
manhood 254 

T. 

Townshend, Norton S., M.D., Letter from, concern- 
ing the mental health of farmers 184 

Todd's, Rev. John, Workshop, described by himself 236 

W. 

What a Business Man thinks about Mental Hygiene. 203 















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